revised version joint with Helge Braun published in: Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, 2007, 32(1), 61-90
We analyze dynamic interactions between market insurance, the stock of insurable assets and liquid wealth accumulation in a model with non-durable and durable consumption. The stock of the durable is exposed to risk against which households can insure. Since the model does not have a closed form solution we first provide an analytical approximation for the case in which households own abundant liquid wealth. It turns out that precautionary motives still matter because of fluctuations of the predetermined durable stock. Second we solve the model numerically. With deterministic labor income the representative agent demands a nonnegligible amount of market insurance. The deductible is substantially higher than in static models because agents can time-diversify their risk. Market insurance implies welfare gains of around .6% in terms of non-durable consumption. Introducing labor income risk into the model does not necessarily increase the importance of market insurance if the borrowing constraint endogenously tightens.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.