Redistribution by insurance market regulation: Analyzing a ban on gender-based retirement annuities
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Redistribution.pdf
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Author(s) • •
Finkelstein, Amy
Poterba, James M.
Rothschild, Casey
Date Issued
October 2008
Journal
Journal of Financial Economics
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Finkelstein, Amy, James Poterba, and Casey Rothschild. “Redistribution by insurance market regulation: Analyzing a ban on gender-based retirement annuities.” Journal of Financial Economics 91.1 (2009): 38-58.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We illustrate how equilibrium screening models can be used to evaluate the economic consequences of insurance market regulation. We calibrate and solve a model of the United Kingdom's compulsory annuity market and examine the impact of gender-based pricing restrictions. We find that the endogenous adjustment of annuity contract menus in response to such restrictions can undo up to half of the redistribution from men to women that would occur with exogenous Social Security-like annuity contracts. Our findings indicate the importance of endogenous contract responses and illustrate the feasibility of employing theoretical insurance market equilibrium models for quantitative policy analysis.
Subjects
insurance regulation
annuities
categorical discrimination
gender-based pricing
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2007.12.006