Self-Insurance and Self-Protection as Public Goods

Tim Lohse, Julio Robledo and Ulrich Schmidt

No 1613, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: Most pure public goods like lighthouses, dams, or national defense provide utility mainly by insuring against hazardous events. Our paper focuses on this insurance character of public goods. As for private actions against hazardous events, one can distinguish between self-insurance (SI) and self-protection (SP) also in the context of public goods. For both cases of SI and SP we analyze efficient public provision levels as well as provision levels resulting from Nash behavior in a private provision game. An interesting aspect of considering public goods as insurance devices is the interaction with market insurance. It turns out that the availability of market insurance reduces the provision level of the public good for both, the public and the private provision, regardless of whether we consider SI or SP. Moreover, we show that Nash behavior has always a larger impact than the availability of market insurance.

Keywords: Self-insurance; self-protection; private provision of public goods; market insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G22 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/30249/1/kap1613.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Self‐Insurance and Self‐Protection as Public Goods (2012)
Working Paper: Self-Insurance and Self-Protection as Public Goods (2007)
Working Paper: Self-Insurance and Self-Protection as Public Goods (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ifwkwp:1613

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