TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bolin,Kristian
AU  - Hedblom,Daniel
AU  - Lindgren,Anna
AU  - Lindgren,Bjorn
TI  - Asymmetric Information and the Demand for Voluntary Health Insurance in Europe
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15689
PY  - 2010
Y2  - January 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15689
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15689.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Kristian Bolin
Department of Economics
Lund University
P.O.Box 7082
SE-220 07 Lund
SWEDEN
E-Mail: Kristian.Bolin@luche.lu.se

Daniel Hedblom
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th St.
Chicago, IL 60637
E-Mail: hedblomdaniel@gmail.com

Anna Lindgren
Centre for Mathematical Sciences
P.O.Box 118
SE- 221 00 Lund
SWEDEN
E-Mail: Anna.Lindgren@matstat.lu.se

Bjorn Lindgren
Department of Economics
University of Gothenburg
P.O.Box 640
SE-40530  Gothenburg
SWEDEN
E-Mail: Bjorn.Lindgren@economics.gu.se
AB  - Several past studies have found health risk to be negatively correlated with the probability of voluntary health insurance. This is contrary to what one would expect from standard textbook models of adverse selection and moral hazard. The two most common explanations to the counter-intuitive result are either (1) that risk-aversion is correlated with health — i.e. that healthier individuals are also more risk-averse — or (2) that insurers are able to discriminate among customers based on observable health-risk characteristics. We revisited these arguments, using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Self-assessed health served as an indicator of risk: better health, lower risk. We did, indeed, observe a negative correlation between risk and insurance but found no evidence of heterogeneous risk-preferences as an explanation to our finding.
ER  -