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Insurance and the Value of Publicly Available Information

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Studies in the Economics of Uncertainty

Abstract

A number of recent papers (e.g., Radner (1981, 1985), Townsend (1982), Rubinstein-Yaari (1983), Lambert (1983), Dionne (1983), and Rogerson (1985)) have studied the role of multi-period contracts in situations characterized by asymmetrically informed agents. In the circumstances envisaged by this literature, multi-period contracts perform no useful function when agents are equally well-informed.1 The present paper considers a different set of circumstances and shows that multi-period contracts may be useful even when agents are symmetrically informed.

We wish to acknowledge useful comments by J.-J. Laffont, C. Fluet and participants in Workshops at Universite de Toulouse and Université du Québec à Montréal. The Régie de l’assurance automobile du Québec provided financial support.

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© 1989 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Boyer, M., Dionne, G., Kihlstrom, R. (1989). Insurance and the Value of Publicly Available Information. In: Fomby, T.B., Seo, T.K. (eds) Studies in the Economics of Uncertainty. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8922-4_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-8922-4_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-8924-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-8922-4

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