This paper examines auditor liability rules under imperfect information, costly litigation and risk-averse auditors. A negligence rule fails in such a setting, because in equilibrium auditors will deviate with positive probability from any given standard. It is shown that strict liability outperforms negligence with respect to risk allocation and the probability that a desired level of care is met by the auditor if competitive liability insurance markets exist. Furthermore, our model explains the existence of insurance contracts containing obligations a type of contract often observed in liability insurance markets.
This paper looks at markets characterized by the fact that the demand side is insured. In these markets a consumer purchases a good to compensate consequences of unfavorable events, such as an accident or an illness. Insurance policies in most lines of insurance base indemnity on the insured's actual expenses, i.e., the insured would be partially or completely reimbursed when purchasing certain goods. In this setting we discuss the interaction between insurance and repair markets by focusing, on the one hand, upon the development of prices and the structure of markets with insured consumers, and, on the other hand, the resulting backlash on optimal insurance contracting. We show that even in the absence of ex post moral hazard the extension of insurance coverage will lead to an increase in prices as well as to a socially undesirable increase in the number of repair service suppliers, if repair markets are imperfect.
The capital-funded health insurance system in Germany (the PKV) is afflicted with a lack of competition because insurants lose their ageing provisions if they switch their insurer. Therefore the transfer of „individual ageing provisions″ has been discussed for many years, but it is mostly regarded as impracticable due to information and incentive problems. In this article a transfer mechanism based consequently on the risk allocation in the PKV is derived. This mechanism can solve the information and incentive problems linked with the transfer of ageing provisions. The result is that the PKV can be extended to a very attractive model to organize health insurance markets. Copyright 2008 die Autoren Journal compilation 2008, Verein für Socialpolitik und Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
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