In my dissertation I study what opportunities and limitations do people face when
it comes to insuring two major risks: longevity risk and health expenditures risk? In
the first chapter I study why retirees do not buy annuities. Annuities provide insurance
against longevity risk but few people buy them. In the previous literature the lack of
interest in annuities has been mainly attributed to the following four factors: a substan
tial amount of existing annuity-like income from Social Security and Defined Benefits
plans, high annuity prices, bequest motive and uncertain health expenses. I construct
a quantitative model that nests all these impediments to annuitization and thus is able
to measure their relative importance. I also extend the list of possible explanations for
low annuity demand by adding three new factors: government means-tested transfers,
difficulties with annuitizing housing wealth, and restrictions on minimum amount that
can be invested in annuity. I find that all three new explanations are important in
explaining low interest in annuities. Among the traditional explanations, income from
Social Security has the largest effect on annuity demand. In the second chapter I study
welfare implications of the health reform in the U.S. This reform has two key compo
nents: a reorganization of the individual health insurance market and an increase in
income redistribution in the economy. I ask which component contributes more to the
welfare outcome of the reform? To address this question I construct a general equilib
rium quantitative model calibrated to replicate key features of the U.S. health insurance
sector. I find that the reform substantially decreases the fraction of the uninsured in the
economy and also brings significant welfare gains. However, these welfare gains mostly
come from the redistributive measures embedded in the reform. If the reform only re
organizes the individual market, introduces individual mandates but does not include
any income-based transfers, the welfare gains are much smaller. This result is mostly
driven by the fact that most uninsured people have low income. High burdens of health
insurance premiums for this group are relieved disproportionately more by income-based
measures than by the new rules in the individual market.