Increases in skewness and insurance

Thomas Eichner ()
Additional contact information
Thomas Eichner: University of Hagen

Economics Bulletin, 2013, vol. 33, issue 4, 2672-2681

Abstract: The present paper analyzes how the welfare state, i.e., social insurance that works through redistributive taxation, should respond to increases in the skewness of the risk distribution. Income risks can be hedged either by individual self-insurance or by social insurance. It is shown that skewness-affine agents reduce both self-insurance and social insurance in response to an increase in income skewness. Thus countries with a more right-skewed income distribution have less redistribution.

Keywords: self-insurance; social insurance; skewness; skewness affinity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 H5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-10-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.accessecon.com/Pubs/EB/2013/Volume33/EB-13-V33-I4-P251.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:ebl:ecbull:eb-13-00702

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economics Bulletin from AccessEcon
Bibliographic data for series maintained by John P. Conley ().