Personality economics: An investigation of how personality develops and how it predicts decisions

<p>This thesis is the product of three research papers, of which each one forms a paper of this thesis. In thefirst paper, I study how people’s personality evolves and whether it is shaped by family dynamics,specifically by the sex of one’s siblings. Researchers developed a good understanding of the importanceof personality for people’s lives but know very little how this personality is shaped. The first paperinvestigates whether growing up with a sister instead of a brother might be a cause of different personalitydevelopment. In the second paper, I study two specific personality traits, locus of control and risktolerance, as predictors of decisions under risk. Although we know risk is a crucial part of our lives, we stillhave not determined how to define and measure risk attitudes properly. The second paper delves deeperinto this topic and shows how risk tolerance and locus of control predict risky decisions in an experimentand in real-world choices and gives some additional insight into the measurement of risk attitudes. In thispaper I also studied other personality traits, which turned out to have no important role with regards todecisions under risk. In the third and last paper, I study property insurance decisions with data collectedin an experiment. I designed and coded the experiment and collected this data partially in a computer laband partially online. This project investigates what behavioral and financial factors influence propertyinsurance decisions, especially the choice to insure with fixed-price long-term contracts.</p>

Personality economics: An investigation of how personality develops and how it predicts decisions

<p>This thesis is the product of three research papers, of which each one forms a paper of this thesis. In thefirst paper, I study how people’s personality evolves and whether it is shaped by family dynamics,specifically by the sex of one’s siblings. Researchers developed a good understanding of the importanceof personality for people’s lives but know very little how this personality is shaped. The first paperinvestigates whether growing up with a sister instead of a brother might be a cause of different personalitydevelopment. In the second paper, I study two specific personality traits, locus of control and risktolerance, as predictors of decisions under risk. Although we know risk is a crucial part of our lives, we stillhave not determined how to define and measure risk attitudes properly. The second paper delves deeperinto this topic and shows how risk tolerance and locus of control predict risky decisions in an experimentand in real-world choices and gives some additional insight into the measurement of risk attitudes. In thispaper I also studied other personality traits, which turned out to have no important role with regards todecisions under risk. In the third and last paper, I study property insurance decisions with data collectedin an experiment. I designed and coded the experiment and collected this data partially in a computer laband partially online. This project investigates what behavioral and financial factors influence propertyinsurance decisions, especially the choice to insure with fixed-price long-term contracts.</p>

FINANCIAL POTENTIAL OF THE INSURANCE MARKET: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF DEVELOPMENT

The insurance market in each country is an indicator of the economy and sustainable business development. When the stability and well-being of a country reaches a certain level, both workers and employers begin to think about their future, to ensure their old age, to finance the risks that exist in everyone’s life, property insurance, and so on. The rapid aging of the world’s population is depleting the financial capacity of citizens, leading to low levels of health care and pensions. Insurance makes it possible to provide daily human protection – both today and in the future. This leads to two effects – the state has additional long-term funds that provide financing for investment projects, which contributes to the further development of the country’s economy; citizens receive insurance protection, savings for future periods, and thus – protection of human interests. The insurance market in Ukraine is at the stage of constant formation. The main obstacles and problems of its development are the unstable socio-economic situation at the present stage and the peculiarity of the cultural and historical traditions of Ukrainian society, the problems of the COVID–19 pandemic and unstable economic development. Therefore, even with significant changes in the legal framework, the insurance market is quite weak in the economy and requires changes in government regulation, namely: strengthening legal and economic mechanisms to protect the interests of the insured and encourage the public and employers to conclude contracts; improvement of investment and credit legislation, directions and spheres of activity of the insurer.

Predicting Flood Property Insurance Claims over CONUS, Fusing Big Earth Observation Data

Each year throughout the contiguous United States (CONUS), flood hazards cause damage amounting to billions of dollars in homeowner insurance claims. As climate change threatens to raise the frequency and severity of flooding in vulnerable areas, the ability to predict the number of property insurance claims resulting from flood events becomes increasingly important to flood resilience. Based on random forest, we develop a flood property Insurance Claims model (iClaim) by fusing records from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), including building locations, topography, basin morphometry, and land cover, with data from multiple sources of hydrometeorological variables, including flood extent, precipitation, and operational river-stage and oceanic water-level measurements. The model utilizes two steps—damage level classification and claim number regression—and subsampling strategies designed accordingly to reduce overfitting and underfitting caused by the flood claim samples, which are unevenly distributed and widely ranged. We evaluate the model using 446,446 grid samples identified from 589 flood events occurring from 2016 to 2019 over CONUS, overlapping 258,159 claims out of a total of 287,439 NFIP records of the same period. Our rigorous validation yields acceptable performance at the grid/event, county/event, and event accumulative level, with R2 over 0.5, 0.9, and 0.95, respectively. We conclude that the iClaim model can be used in many application scenarios, including assessing flood impact and improving flood resilience.

JOINT MODEL PREDICTION AND APPLICATION TO INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL LOSS RESERVING

Innon-life insurance, the payment history can be predictive of the timing of a settlement for individual claims. Ignoring the association between the payment process and the settlement process could bias the prediction of outstanding payments. To address this issue, we introduce into the literature of micro-level loss reserving a joint modeling framework that incorporates longitudinal payments of a claim into the intensity process of claim settlement. We discuss statistical inference and focus on the prediction aspects of the model. We demonstrate applications of the proposed model in the reserving practice with a detailed empirical analysis using data from a property insurance provider. The prediction results from an out-of-sample validation show that the joint model framework outperforms existing reserving models that ignore the payment–settlement association.

Flood risk and buyer search behavior in Ho Chi Minh City

Purpose This study aims to investigate countries without national property insurance and see how experience affects behavior toward higher-risk flood prone property. Design/methodology/approach Using a unique data set that captures the flood experiences of homeowners that search for new housing, the authors examine the premiums or discounts of such experience on homes at risk. The authors use hedonic property modeling to estimate the effects of experience on values. Findings The authors find that such experiences play a strong role in convincing buyers of the real risks imposed by climate change and sea level rise and the authors expect these demand-side behavioral changes to persist. This finding is unlike more developed markets where insurance may be subsidized and negative effects on value dissipate within a few years. Research limitations/implications The world is starting to pay more attention to climate risk and the results in developed countries have been biased by the extensive insurance provided by the government or emergency funding. Practical implications Providing market transparency on climate risks will result in permanent market effects, if not otherwise subsidized. Social implications The governments should encourage market disclosure. Originality/value No one has ever had a data set like this before where the authors get to observe the behavior of those already experiencing property losses from flooding.

STATE OF CONCENTRATION AND MONOPOLIZATION OF THE INSURANCE MARKET OF UKRAINE

The intensity and quality of insurance market development are directly related to the level of competition, concentration and monopolization between insurance companies. Although the insurance market of Ukraine is insignificant in terms of key indicators in comparison with foreign ones, the competitiveness of its insurers is very important to ensure proper insurance protection of policyholders. The article is devoted to the assessment of the processes of concentration and monopolization of the insurance market of Ukraine. The study analyzed the structure of the insurance market by segments, concentration indicators and the Herfindahl-Hirschman index for the market as a whole and for individual types of insurance, gradation of insurance companies by the amount of collected insurance premiums. Based on the assessment, it was determined that the insurance market of Ukraine is generally low concentrated, as well as the sector of risky types of insurance. Among the selected segments of the insurance market, the most concentrated is the CASCO insurance. In the field of health insurance there is a slightly lower level of concentration and monopolization as in the OTSPVVNTZ segment. The market of classical property insurance is the least concentrated. The life insurance segment is characterized by moderate concentration and monopolization. The most powerful insurance companies in the relevant sectors of the insurance market of Ukraine are outlined. Since 2015, the top three leaders of the life insurance market are PJSC “MetLife”, PJSC “Insurance Group TAS” and PJSC “IC UNIСA LIFE”. Virtually unchanged leaders in the field of risk insurance during 2018-2020 were PJSC “IC ARX”, PJSC “IC UNICA” and PJSC “Insurance Group TAS”, which are members of financial groups that include leaders of the life insurance market. In general, the national insurance market is becoming more concentrated, which will be appropriate and accepted benefits while strong market players will not involve their residents, and the state controls these processes.

Discrete Choice under Risk with Limited Consideration

This paper is concerned with learning decision-makers’ preferences using data on observed choices from a finite set of risky alternatives. We propose a discrete choice model with unobserved heterogeneity in consideration sets and in standard risk aversion. We obtain sufficient conditions for the model’s semi-nonparametric point identification, including in cases where consideration depends on preferences and on some of the exogenous variables. Our method yields an estimator that is easy to compute and is applicable in markets with large choice sets. We illustrate its properties using a dataset on property insurance purchases. (JEL D81, D83, D91, G22, G52)

OSIGURANjE LICA OD POSLEDICA NESREĆNOG SLUČAJA (NEZGODE)

Accident insurance, together with life insurance are two basic types of individual insurance traditionally covered by insurance law. In this kind of insurance, the insurer for a certain insurance premium, assumes the obligation to pay the insured sum to the insured individual or other beneficiary if, during the insurance contract, the insured person or other beneficiary sustains injury or even death as a result of the accident covered by the insurance contract, as well as to reimburse the costs of medical treatment and income loss as a result of temporary work disability, if foreseen by the contract. The basic rule in accident insurance is that, in case of the accident covered by the contract, the insured person will receive the insured sum agreed in the contract, and not the reimbursement of the incurred expenses or losses. Only in rare cases this type of insurance has the elements of property insurance – only in cases when the insured is entitled, in addition to the insured sum, to reimbursement of medical expenses and income loss. Today, the insurance of the individuals against accidents is widely used. It is a specific type of services offered by insurance companies. From the original accident insurance contracts signed on voluntary bases, we have come long way to have a large number of mandatory accident insurances, which is mostly the result of the growing number of occupations with the risk of accidents. It is obvious that beneficiaries of this type of insurance have realized that for a relatively small amount of premium, they will receive protection if they suffer from unexpected accidents that may result in physical injuries, even fatalities.