Insurance and Self-Insurance – Substitutes or Complements?
Insurance and Self-Insurance – Substitutes or Complements?

Summary/Abstract: Classical result by Ehrlich and Becker states that with two states of the world, market insurance and self-insurance are substitutes. However, it turns out that conclusion does not hold in the model with many states. This paper considers interactions between price of compulsory market insurance and demand for self-insurance. We present sufficient conditions for self-insurance to be complementary or substitute for market insurance. We provide economic interpretation of that result, highlighting the role of an efficiency of self-insurace as a key to understanding the phenomenon.

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