To commit or not to commit: A health insurance monopoly with variable quality and uncertain types of individuals

Mathias Kifmann ()

No 288, Discussion Papers, Series I from University of Konstanz, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the trade-off between risk allocation and quality supply for an insurance monopolist when individuals face two kinds of risk related to health. First, they may suffer an ordinary monetary loss. Second, they are subject to uncertain premiums because their type may change. We assume that neither quality of insurance service,nor the individual type is verifiable in front of a court. We show that no-commitment is a necessary condition for the efficient supply of unverifiable quality while the insurance of premium risk requires commitment. Profit-maximizing contracts may involve full, partial or no- commitment. Risk allocation or quality supply is inefficient.

Keywords: health insurance; premium risk; unverifiable quality; commitment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D80 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1997
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/68870/1/685786633.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:zbw:kondp1:288

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers, Series I from University of Konstanz, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().