An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance

Tomas Philipson and John Cawley

American Economic Review, 1999, vol. 89, issue 4, 827-846

Abstract: This paper uses direct evidence to evaluate whether asymmetric information is a barrier to trade in the largest market for private insurance in the world: life insurance. We report several findings that seem difficult to reconcile with the conventional theory of insurance under asymmetric information. We conjecture that sellers may know their costs of production better than consumers in this market, as in those for most other products.

JEL-codes: D82 G22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.89.4.827
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (230)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.89.4.827 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance (1997)
Working Paper: An Empirical Examination of Information Barriers to Trade in Insurance (1996)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:89:y:1999:i:4:p:827-846

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().