IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ysm/somwrk/ysm335.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

An Experimental Study of the Full-Coverage Puzzle

Author

Listed:
  • Itzhak Venezia
  • Zur Shapira

Abstract

One of the most intriguing questions in insurance is the preference of consumers to buy low or no deductible insurance policies. This stands in sharp contrast to the theorem, proved by Mossin, 1968, that when the price of insurance is higher than its actuarial value, then under quite reasonable assumptions full coverage is not optimal. We show in a set of experiments that amateur subjects tend to underestimate the value of a policy with a deductible and that the degree of underestimation depends on the level

Suggested Citation

  • Itzhak Venezia & Zur Shapira, 2003. "An Experimental Study of the Full-Coverage Puzzle," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm335, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Apr 2003.
  • Handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm335
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://icfpub.som.yale.edu/publications/2594
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. MOSSIN, Jan, 1968. "Aspects of rational insurance purchasing," LIDAM Reprints CORE 23, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    3. Johnson, Eric J & Hershey, John & Meszaros, Jacqueline & Kunreuther, Howard, 1993. "Framing, Probability Distortions, and Insurance Decisions," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 7(1), pages 35-51, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jiakun Zheng, 2020. "Optimal insurance design under narrow framing," Post-Print hal-04227370, HAL.
    2. Zheng, Jiakun, 2020. "Optimal insurance design under narrow framing," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 596-607.
    3. Morshedi, Mohamad Ali & Kashani, Hamed, 2022. "Assessment of vulnerability reduction policies: Integration of economic and cognitive models of decision-making," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    4. Itzhak Venezia & Zur Shapira, 2003. "An Experimental Study of the Full-Coverage Puzzle," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm335, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Apr 2003.
    5. Hwang, In Do, 2021. "Prospect theory and insurance demand: Empirical evidence on the role of loss aversion," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    6. Daniel Stein & Jeremy Tobacman, 2016. "Weather Insurance Savings Accounts," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 41(4), pages 677-700, October.
    7. Hwang, In Do, 2024. "Behavioral aspects of household portfolio choice: Effects of loss aversion on life insurance uptake and savings," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PA), pages 1029-1053.
    8. Shapira, Zur & Venezia, Itzhak, 2008. "On the preference for full-coverage policies: Why do people buy too much insurance?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(5), pages 747-761, November.
    9. Kubitza, Christian & Hofmann, Annette & Steinorth, Petra, 2019. "Financial literacy and precautionary insurance," ICIR Working Paper Series 34/19, Goethe University Frankfurt, International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR).
    10. Alex Gershkov & Benny Moldovanu & Philipp Strack & Mengxi Zhang, 2023. "Optimal Insurance: Dual Utility, Random Losses and Adverse Selection," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 242, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    11. Itzhak Venezia, 2018. "Lecture Notes in Behavioral Finance," World Scientific Books, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., number 10751, August.
    12. Miriam Krieger & Stefan Felder, 2013. "Can Decision Biases Improve Insurance Outcomes? An Experiment on Status Quo Bias in Health Insurance Choice," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-18, June.
    13. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    14. Jidong Zhou, 2011. "Reference Dependence and Market Competition," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(4), pages 1073-1097, December.
    15. Charles Changchuan Jiang & Liana Fraenkel, 2017. "The Influence of Varying Cost Formats on Preferences," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 37(1), pages 17-26, January.
    16. Shawn Cole & Xavier Gine & Jeremy Tobacman & Petia Topalova & Robert Townsend & James Vickery, 2013. "Barriers to Household Risk Management: Evidence from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(1), pages 104-135, January.
    17. Remmerswaal, Minke & Boone, Jan & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, Rudy, 2019. "Cost-sharing design matters: A comparison of the rebate and deductible in healthcare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 83-97.
    18. Robert Bordley & Joseph Kadane, 1999. "Experiment-dependent priors in psychology and physics," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 213-227, December.
    19. Subir Sen & S Madheswaran, 2013. "Regional determinants of life insurance consumption: evidence from selected Asian economies," Asian-Pacific Economic Literature, The Crawford School, The Australian National University, vol. 27(2), pages 86-103, November.
    20. Thomas Kourouxous & Thomas Bauer, 2019. "Violations of dominance in decision-making," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 12(1), pages 209-239, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ysm:somwrk:ysm335. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/smyalus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.