保险业低声誉的经济学解释:基于时间不一致偏好的视角

Economic Explanation for Low Reputation of Insurance Industry:From the Perspective of Consumer Time Inconsistent Preference

整体行业的低声誉已经成为影响中国保险业快速健康发展的突出问题。本文基于时间不一致偏好理论构建了(半)双曲折现模型,通过分析保险消费者的最优购买行为以及在垄断竞争条件下保险公司的最优竞争策略,首次发现和解释了导致保险业低声誉的经济机理。研究表明,消费者的时间不一致偏好导致了其保险购买意愿不足,为此在市场均衡条件下保险公司的最优竞争策略是操纵消费者的风险感知,这是导致保险行业低声誉的直接原因,但这并不必然会导致消费者的事后福利受到损失。伴随我国保险市场竞争程度的提高,试图通过政府加强监管解决保险行业低声誉的直接效应可能是低效且损害消费者福利,加强消费者的风险感知教育才是解决问题的有效手段。但是,政府可以通过加强监管来增加保险公司操纵消费者风险感知的成本,这对普及消费者的风险感知教育具有积极的促进作用。

Low reputation of insurance industry in China imposes a prominent negative impact on its healthy development. In this paper, we uncover the economic mechanism driving the formation of low reputation of insurance industry and propose some policy suggestions to remedy this problem. We first apply semi-hyperbolic discount model to study insurance purchasing behavior of consumers and show that the consumers＇ time inconsistent preferences make them less willing to buy insurance. Given consumers＇ low insurance demand, we show, under the assumption of monopolistic competition, that the best response strategy of insurance companies in market equilibrium is to manipulate consumers＇ risk perception, which constitutes the direct cause of the low reputation of the insurance industry. The market equilibrium, however, does not necessarily lead to the loss of consumers＇ well-being. As a consequence, strengthening government regulation may be inefficient at overcoming the low reputation of insurance industry and even harm consumer welfare. In contrast, implementing consumer cognitive education about risk is an effective means.