Susanne Pech,
"Adverse Selection with individual- and joint-life annuities"
, Serie Working Papers of the Department of Economics at JKU Linz, Nummer 0412, 11-2004
Original Titel:
Adverse Selection with individual- and joint-life annuities
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
This paper includes couples on the demand side and analyses their implications on the problem of adverse selection in the annuity market. First, we examine the pooling equilibrium for individual-life annuities and show that in the presence of couples the rate of return on individual-life annuities is lower in case that couples do not have the advantage of joint consumption of "family public goods" as well as in case of a logarithmic utility function. Second, we examine the market for joint-life annuities. Due to their higher chance that only one partner survives to the retirement, couples with short-lived partners put more weight on the survivor benefit than couples with at least one longer-lived partner. This fact is used by annuity companies to separate couples according to their partners' life-expectancies. Hence, we find that only a separating equilibrium may exist. These results are obtained in a framework where couples are mandated to buy joint-life annuities and only single persons buy individual-life annuities. When relaxing this assumption by allowing couples to choose between individual- and joint-life annuities, we find that in equilibrium couples with long-lived partners buy individual-life annuities, while couples with short-lived partners buy joint-life annuities. However, couples with one long-lived and one short-lived partner may decide for either type of annuities, depending on the exogenous parameters. Accordingly, we identify two different types of equilibria.
Sprache der Kurzfassung:
Englisch
Serie:
Working Papers of the Department of Economics at JKU Linz
Forschungs-