Bertrand and Walras equilibria under moral hazard

We consider a simple model of competition under moral hazard with constant return technologies. We consider preferences that are not separable in effort: marginal utility of income is assumed to increase with leisure, especially for high income levels. We show that, in this context, Bertrand competition may result in positive equilibrium profit. This result holds for purely idiosyncratic shocks when only deterministic contracts are considered, and extends to unrestricted contract spaces in the presence of aggregate uncertainty. Finally, these findings have important consequences upon the definition of an equilibrium. We show that, in this context, a Walrasian general equilibrium a la Prescott-Townsend may fail to exist: any 'equilibrium' must involve rationing.

Better Safe than Sorry? Ex Ante and Ex Post Moral Hazard in Dynamic Insurance Data

This paper empirically analyzes moral hazard in car insurance using a dynamic theory of an insuree's dynamic risk (ex ante moral hazard) and claim (ex post moral hazard) choices and Dutch longitudinal micro data. We use the theory to characterize the heterogeneous dynamic changes in incentives to avoid claims that are generated by the Dutch experience-rating scheme, and their effects on claim times and sizes under moral hazard. We develop tests that exploit these structural implications of moral hazard and experience rating. Unlike much of the earlier literature, we find evidence of moral hazard.insurance;moral hazard;selection;state dependence;event-history analysis

Commitment and the Dynamics of Household Labor Supply

The extent to which individuals commit to their partner for life has important implications. This paper develops a lifecycle collective model of the household, through which it characterizes behavior in three prominent alternative types of commitment: full, limited, and no commitment. We propose a test that distinguishes between all three types based on how contemporaneous and historical news affect household behavior. Our test permits heterogeneity in the degree of commitment across households. Using recent data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we reject full and no commitment, while we find strong evidence for limited commitment

Consumer choice and revealed bounded rationality

We study two boundedly rational procedures in consumer behavior. We show that these procedures can be detected by conditions on observable demand data of the same type as standard revealed preference axioms. This provides the basis for a non-parametric analysis of boundedly rational consumer behavior mirroring the classical one for utility maximization

Moral hazard and dynamic insurance data

This paper exploits dynamic features of insurance contracts in the empirical analysis of moral hazard. We first show that experience rating implies negative occurrence dependence under moral hazard: individual claim intensities decrease with the number of past claims. We then show that dynamic insurance data allow to distinguish this moral-hazard effect from dynamic selection on unobservables. We develop nonparametric tests and estimate a flexible parametric model. We find no evidence of moral hazard in French car insurance. Our analysis contributes to a recent literature based on static data that has problems distinguishing between moral hazard and selection and dealing with dynamic features of actual insurance contracts. Methodologically, this paper builds on and extends the literature on state dependence and heterogeneity in event-history data. © 2003 by the European Economic Association