BP3: Empirical Microeconomics (6 and 13 Dec.) Jaap Abbring , Department of Economics, University College London, Autumn 2002

I will focus on the empirical analysis of asymmetric information, and adverse selection and moral hazard in particular, in insurance using dynamic insurance data.

• "Adverse selection and moral hazard in insurance: Can dynamic data help to distinguish?" (with P.A. Chiappori, J.J. Heckman and J. Pinquet)
• "Moral hazard and dynamic insurance data" (with P.A. Chiappori and J. Pinquet)

The first paper is a short non-technical overview of the research program. The second paper provides an empirical analysis of moral hazard in car insurance. We exploit dynamic changes in incentives that are inherent to the experience rating structure of French car insurance contracts. Be warned that this is a fairly technical paper. If time permits, we may extend the discussion to moral hazard in unemployment insurance (UI).

• "The effect of unemployment insurance sanctions on the transition rate from unemployment to employment" (with G.J. van den Berg and J.C. van Ours)
• "The non-parametric identification of treatment effects in duration models" (with G.J. van den Berg)
  

The first paper provides an empirical analysis of sanctions, punitive benefits reductions, in unemployment insurance (UI). As in the car insurance paper above, we exploit dynamic changes in incentives (in this case, sanctions) to test for moral hazard. The second paper is very technical and provides discussion of methodological background for the UI paper.

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