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Full-Text Articles in Law
Racial Discrimination In Life Insurance, William G. Gale, Kyle D. Logue, Nora Cahill, Rachel Gu, Swati Joshi
Racial Discrimination In Life Insurance, William G. Gale, Kyle D. Logue, Nora Cahill, Rachel Gu, Swati Joshi
Law & Economics Working Papers
We examine the historical and statistical relationship between race and life insurance. Life insurance can play a central role in households’ financial security. Race has played an important and changing role in the provision of life insurance in the U.S. from slave insurance before the Civil War, to “Scientific Racism” continuing into the 20th century, to policies that do not explicitly mention race in recent decades. In empirical work using new data, we confirm earlier work showing that Black individuals have higher life insurance coverage rates than white individuals, controlling for observable characteristics. We find no difference in the likelihood …
The Case For Banning (And Mandating) Ransomware Insurance, Kyle D. Logue, Adam B. Shniderman
The Case For Banning (And Mandating) Ransomware Insurance, Kyle D. Logue, Adam B. Shniderman
Law & Economics Working Papers
Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly pervasive and disruptive. Not only are they shutting down (or at least “holding up”) businesses and local governments all around the country, they are disrupting institutions in many sectors of the U.S. economy — from school systems, to medical facilities, to critical elements of the U.S. energy infrastructure as well as the food supply chain. Ransomware attacks are also growing more frequent and the ransom demands more exorbitant. Those ransom payments are increasingly being covered by insurance. That insurance offers coverage for a variety of cyber-related losses, including many of the costs arising out of …
The Perverse Effects Of Subsidized Weather Insurance, Kyle D. Logue, Omri Ben-Shahar
The Perverse Effects Of Subsidized Weather Insurance, Kyle D. Logue, Omri Ben-Shahar
Law & Economics Working Papers
This Article explores the role of insurance as a substitute for direct regulation of risks posed by severe weather. In pricing the risk of human activity along the predicted path of storms, insurance can provide incentives for efficient location decisions as well as for cost-justified mitigation effort in building construction and infrastructure. Currently, however, much insurance for severe weather risks is provided and heavily subsidized by the government. The Article demonstrates two primary distortions arising from the government’s dominance in these insurance markets. First, the subsidies are allocated differentially across households, resulting in a significant regressive redistribution, favoring affluent homeowners …
Mandatory Rules And Default Rules In Insurance Contracts, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue
Mandatory Rules And Default Rules In Insurance Contracts, Tom Baker, Kyle D. Logue
Law & Economics Working Papers
The economic analysis of contract law can organized around two general questions: (1) what are the efficient or welfare-maximizing substantive rules of contract law; and (2) once those rules have been identified, when if ever should they be made mandatory and when should they be merely “default rules” that the parties can contract around if they wish? Much of contract theory over the past twenty years has been devoted to developing answers to those two questions. The same two questions can be posed with respect to the rules of insurance law. Although previous scholars have examined particular substantive doctrines of …
Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz
Understanding Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz
Law & Economics Working Papers
Insurance companies are in the business of discrimination. Insurers attempt to segregate insureds into separate risk pools based on their differences in risk profiles, first, so that they can charge different premiums to the different groups based on their risk and, second, to incentivize risk reduction by insureds. This is why we let insurers discriminate. There are, however, limits to the types of discrimination we will allow insurers to engage in. But what exactly are those limits and how are they justified? To answer these questions, this Article articulates the leading fairness and efficiency arguments for and against limiting insurers’ …
Explaining Variation In Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz
Explaining Variation In Insurance Anti-Discrimination Laws, Ronen Avraham, Kyle D. Logue, Daniel Benjamin Schwarcz
Law & Economics Working Papers
Discrimination in insurance underwriting is regulated at the state level. Surprisingly, there is a great deal of variation across jurisdictions in how and the extent to which risk classification by insurers is limited. Some states expressly permit insurers to consider certain characteristics, while other characteristics are forbidden or limited in various ways. What explains this variation across states? Drawing on a unique, hand-collected data-set consisting of the laws regulating insurer risk classification in all 51 U.S. jurisdictions, this Article argues that much of the variation in state-level regulation of risk classification can in fact be explained by focusing exclusively on …
Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy
Essential Health Benefits And The Affordable Care Act: Law And Process, Nicholas Bagley, Helen Levy
Law & Economics Working Papers
Beginning in 2014, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require private insurance plans sold in the individual and small-group markets to cover a roster of “essential health benefits.” Precisely which benefits should count as essential, however, was left to the discretion of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The matter was both important and controversial. HHS nonetheless announced its policy on essential health benefits by posting on its website a 13-page bulletin stating that it would allow each state to define essential benefits for itself by choosing a “benchmark” plan modeled on existing plans in the state. On …