Eco-lunch - Jiakun Zheng
2025-11-13 11:00 - 12:00 UTC | MEGA - Salle Carine Nourry, 424, Chemin du Viaduc, 13080 Aix-en-Provence
This paper examines insurance decisions between spouses using field data on critical illness insurance from an insurtech company. Beyond the well-documented breadwinner effect---where men are generally insured more than women---we find that male insured individuals receive significantly higher insurance coverage from their spouses than they purchase for themselves, whereas no such discrepancy is observed for female insured individuals. This pattern suggests that the identity of the purchaser plays an important role in insurance decisions, which we show can be attributed to differences in health beliefs rather than to other spousal differences such as risk preferences. Two pieces of evidence support this interpretation. First, by examining how insurance demand responds to health information, we find that in the face of negative health signals regarding male insured individuals, their wives respond more actively---purchasing more insurance for their husbands than men do for themselves. In contrast, no such asymmetry is observed for female insured individuals. Second, an information-provision experiment with married individuals further confirms these findings in a controlled, out-of-sample setting.\n\nContact: Houda Hafidi : houda.hafidi[at]sciencespo-aix.frFederico Trionfetti : federico.trionfetti[at]univ-amu.fr

Plus d'informations: https://www.amse-aixmarseille.fr/fr/evenements/jiakun-zheng-3
