Imperfect Information and Participation in Insurance Markets: Evidence from Italy

Fabio Santeramo

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Participation in crop insurance programs is lowered by imperfect knowledge resulting in adverse selection and moral hazard problems. We aim at investigating how experience in insurance contracts may influence participation in the Italian crop insurance market. From Italian farm-level data we estimate a dynamic discrete choice model of participation to investigate the role of experience. The methodology, coupled with exploratory analysis of the data, allows one to compare the relevance of different sources of experience in the crop insurance decision making process. We found that experience tend to be a catalyst for insurance participation. Policy implications are discussed: in particular we discuss on the importance of bolstering uptake to exploit the advantages of the inertia and spillover effects that emerge from experience. To the best of our knowledge, the role of experience has been underinvestigated. Our analysis has the specific contribution of modeling the potential role of experience (exploited after buying an insurance contract) on uptake in crop insurance programs.

Keywords: Asymmetric information; Dynamic model; Familiarity; Imperfect Knowledge; Uptake (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G22 Q12 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dcm and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Agricultural Finance Review 78.2(2018): pp. 183-194

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Journal Article: Imperfect information and participation in insurance markets: evidence from Italy (2018)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:85780

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