Property and Casualty Insurance (P&C) - Henry B. Tippie ...The similarities between the viatical settlement market and the standard market for
insurance evoke the question of what effect asymmetric information, an oft discussed
topic surrounding standard markets, might have in the viatical settlement market. In order
to examine the possibility of the existence of adverse selection in this market, as well as
to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of the market in general, I analyze a model
describing consumer behavior in this market. Applying the results of my analysis to the
logic of a classic adverse selection model, I develop and implement a test of adverse
selection in the viatical settlement market using nationally representative data on viatical
transactions. Additionally, I extract a new prediction from the consumer behavior model
relating the probability of selling life insurance to both the policy’s face value and the
policyholder’s mortality risk, and I test this prediction against data on HIV+ individuals.
In the end I find that there is no empirical evidence for adverse selection in the viatical
settlement market, and that the consumer behavior model is largely consistent with the
data.