Piotr Dudziński
ARTICLE

(Polish) PDF

ABSTRACT

The article considers the impact of nonmonetary factors (health) on insurance and self-insurance (against material damage) decisions. Using a two-argument utility function, we prove that the health deterioration leads to increased demand for insurance if the decision-maker is cross-prudent in health and if wealth and health are complements. Those conditions are equivalent to positivity of second and third order degree cross-derivatives of the utility function. Second part of the article considers analogous effect of health deterioration on self-insurance. In this case the result depends additionally on effectivity of self-insurance as a function of the state of the world.

KEYWORDS

insurance, self-insurance, cross-prudence in health

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