insurance, Microeconomics

Assignment Help:
#question.Question: Answer all parts (a, b, c, d, e & f).

Consider the following insurance market. There are two states of the world, B and G, and two types of consumers, H and L, who have probabilities pH =0.5 and pL =0.25 (high and low risk) respectively of being in state B. They have common endowment e=(eG,eB) = (£900, £100). The individuals have expected utility preferences over state-contingent consumptions c=(cG,cB), with common utility function u(ci)=ln(ci), where i=B,G. Insurance firms are risk-neutral profit maximisers and offer contracts in exchange for the individuals’ endowments.

Suppose the market is competitive.

a) Outline the definition of a competitive equilibrium of this market and explain why every contract, offered by every firm, must earn zero profit in equilibrium. [7 marks]

b) Suppose the information concerning individuals’ types is symmetric, but void. It is commonly known, however, that the proportion of low risk consumers is 0.4. Derive the equilibrium set of contracts. [5 marks]

c) Find the equilibrium set of contracts when information is symmetric and perfect. [5 marks]

Now suppose that information is asymmetric; individuals know their own type but insurance firms cannot distinguish between types. (Note: there does exist an equilibrium set of contracts for this market. You may make use of this fact without proving it).

d) Explain why it must be that, if {cH,cL} is the equilibrium set of contracts, then
cH ? cL. [4 marks]

e) Explain and derive the equilibrium contract offered to high risk individuals. [3 marks]

f) Explain and derive the equilibrium contract offered to low risk individuals. [9 marks]

Related Discussions:- insurance

Market structures, discuss the implications of various market structures(co...

discuss the implications of various market structures(competitive and non-competitive) for price determination

What is a prisoners dilemma, 1. Ayanna grows herbs. Last year she grew 2,00...

1. Ayanna grows herbs. Last year she grew 2,000 pounds of herbs in a year while using 250 square feet of land and 1 worker. This year she doubled her land to 500 square feet, doubl

Compute marginal cost and average total cost, 1.  What is the relationship ...

1.  What is the relationship between a firm's total revenue, profit and total cost? Give an example of hypothetical data and draw the curves. 2.  Define economies of scale and e

Describe one case that fits the story of prisoner dilemma, Describe one cas...

Describe one case that fits the story of Prisoner Dilemma in not more than 10 sentences. It should fit the following features and it should not be any of the examples we already ta

Bilateral and Multilateral Contracts, Bilateral and Multilateral Contracts ...

Bilateral and Multilateral Contracts Bilateral contract is defined as to purchase & sell certain quantities of a commodity at the agreed upon prices may be entered into between the

Economic champter 1, provide 3 examples of 1210 billionares in the world fa...

provide 3 examples of 1210 billionares in the world face scarcity

How might governments lower the natural rate of unemployment, How might gov...

How might governments lower the natural rate of unemployment? An easy way to organise the answer is to separate possible solutions into two broad groups; interventionist and m

Externality, When somebody wearing muddy shoes rides a public bus, he impos...

When somebody wearing muddy shoes rides a public bus, he imposes a negative externality on other riders (passengers get some mud rubbed off on them, and the shoes look ugly). If a

Write Your Message!

Captcha
Free Assignment Quote

Assured A++ Grade

Get guaranteed satisfaction & time on delivery in every assignment order you paid with us! We ensure premium quality solution document along with free turntin report!

All rights reserved! Copyrights ©2019-2020 ExpertsMind IT Educational Pvt Ltd