Long-Term Care Insurance: Information Frictions and Selection

Résumé

This paper conducts a stated-choice experiment where respondents are asked to rate various insurance products aimed to protect against nancial risks associated with long-term care needs. Using exogenous variation in prices from the survey design and individual cost estimates, these stated-choice probabilities are used to predict market equilibrium for long-term care insurance. Our results are twofold. First, information frictions are pervasive. Second, measuring the welfare losses associated with frictions in a framework that also allows for selection, it is found that information frictions reduce equilibrium take-up and lead to large welfare losses while selection plays little role.