The purpose of this article is to structure the extant knowledge on the determinants of microinsurance demand and to discuss unresolved questions that deserve future research. To achieve this outcome, we review the academic literature on microinsurance demand published between 2000 and early 2013. The review identifies 12 key factors affecting microinsurance demand: price, wealth, risk aversion, non-performance risk, trust and peer effects, religion, financial literacy, informal risk sharing, quality of service, risk exposure, age, and gender. We discuss the evidence of how each of these 12 factors influences demand, both within the microinsurance and the traditional insurance markets. A comparison with traditional markets shows an unexpected (negative) effect of risk aversion on microinsurance demand, with trust perhaps being the intervening factor. Other relevant results include the importance of liquidity (and/or access to credit), informal risk sharing, and peer effects on the decision to buy microinsurance. The influence of trust on insurance take-up and the unanticipated results for risk aversion are fertile areas for future research.

The purpose of this article is to structure the extant knowledge on the determinants of microinsurance demand and to discuss unresolved questions that deserve future research. To achieve this outcome, we review the academic literature on microinsurance demand published between 2000 and early 2013. The review identifies 12 key factors affecting microinsurance demand: price, wealth, risk aversion, non-performance risk, trust and peer effects, religion, financial literacy, informal risk sharing, quality of service, risk exposure, age, and gender. We discuss the evidence of how each of these 12 factors influences demand, both within the microinsurance and the traditional insurance markets. A comparison with traditional markets shows an unexpected (negative) effect of risk aversion on microinsurance demand, with trust perhaps being the intervening factor. Other relevant results include the importance of liquidity (and/or access to credit), informal risk sharing, and peer effects on the decision to buy microinsurance. The influence of trust on insurance take-up and the unanticipated results for risk aversion are fertile areas for future research.

Incentivizing unobservable effort in risky environments, such as in insurance, credit, and labor markets, is vital as moral hazard may otherwise cause significant welfare losses including the outright failure of markets. Ensuring incentive-compatibility through state-contingent contracts between principal and agent, however, is undesirable for risk-averse agents. We provide theoretical intuition on how pro-social preferences between agents in a joint liability group contract can ensure incentivecompatibility. Two independent large-scale behavioral experiments framed in an insurance context support the hypotheses derived from our theory. In particular, effort decreases when making agents' payoff less state-dependent, but this effect is mitigated with joint liability in a group scheme where agents are additionally motivated by pro-social concerns. Activating strategic motives slightly increases effort further; particularly in non-anonymous groups with high network strength. The results suggest that joint liability within groups of pro-social agents is a promising policy to improve efficiency under risk and asymmetric information.

Incentivizing unobservable effort in risky environments, such as in insurance, credit, and labor markets, is vital as moral hazard may otherwise cause significant welfare losses including the outright failure of markets. Ensuring incentive-compatibility through state-contingent contracts between principal and agent, however, is undesirable for risk-averse agents. We provide theoretical intuition on how pro-social preferences between agents in a joint liability group contract can ensure incentivecompatibility. Two independent large-scale behavioral experiments framed in an insurance context support the hypotheses derived from our theory. In particular, effort decreases when making agents' payoff less state-dependent, but this effect is mitigated with joint liability in a group scheme where agents are additionally motivated by pro-social concerns. Activating strategic motives slightly increases effort further; particularly in non-anonymous groups with high network strength. The results suggest that joint liability within groups of pro-social agents is a promising policy to improve efficiency under risk and asymmetric information.

This article reports the main results of the 2013 Risk Premium Project update, a yearly review of actuarial and finance literature on the theory and empirics of risk assessment for property-casualty insurance. The literature review reveals a broad variety of topics, with a strong leaning toward catastrophe risk, market efficiency, and new valuation techniques. Within the field of catastrophe risk, the role of weather and climate-related risks for the insurance sector is reviewed and both the threats and the opportunities arising from the changing risk landscape are discussed.