The American Risk and Insurance Association presents the Robert I. Mehr Award each year for the paper published ten years ago in the Journal of Risk and Insurance that has best stood the test of time. The evaluation of the articles is made by the editorial board of JRI.
2024 Robert I. Mehr Award:
The recipients of the 2024 Mehr Award are Amy Finkelstein and James Poterba for “Testing for Asymmetric Information Using ‘Unused Observables’ in Insurance Markets: Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market.”
Abstract
This article tests for asymmetric information in the U.K. annuity market of the 1990s by trying to identify “unused observables,” attributes of individual insurance buyers that are correlated both with subsequent claims experience and with insurance demand but that insurance companies did not use to set insurance prices. Unlike the widely used positive correlation test for asymmetric information, which searches for a positive correlation between insurance demand and risk experience, the unused observables test is not confounded by heterogeneity in individual preference parameters that may affect insurance demand. We identify residential location as an unused observable in the U.K. annuity market of this period. Even though residential location was observed by all market participants, the decision not to condition prices on it created the same types of market inefficiencies that arise when annuity buyers have private information about mortality risk. Our findings raise questions about how insurance companies select the set of buyer attributes that they use in setting policy prices. In the decade following the period that we study, U.K. insurance companies changed their pricing practices and began to condition annuity prices on a buyer’s postcode.
Archive of Mehr Award Winners
2023 Robert I. Mehr Award
Sommarat Chantarat, Andrew Mude, Christopher Barrett, and Michael Carter for “Designing Index-Based Livestock Insurance for Managing Asset Risk in Northern Kenya.
2022 Robert I. Mehr Award
Jan Dhaene, Andreas Tsanakas, Emiliano Valdez, and Steven Vanduffel for Optimal Capital Allocation Principles.
2021 Robert I. Mehr Award
Robert Hoyt and Andre Liebenberg for The Value of Enterprise Risk Management.
2020 Robert I. Mehr Award
Alma Cohen and Peter Siegelman for Testing for Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets.
2019 Robert I. Mehr Award
Scott Harrington for The Financial Crisis, Systemic Risk, and the Future of Insurance Regulation.
2018 Robert I. Mehr Award
Okmyung Bin, Jamie Brown Kruse, and Craig E. Landry for Flood Hazards, Insurance Rates, and Amenities: Evidence From the Coastal Housing Market.
2017 Robert I. Mehr Award
Kenneth A. Froot for Risk Management, Capital Budgeting, and Capital Structure Policy for Insurers and Reinsurers.
2016 Robert I. Mehr Award
Andrew J. G. Cairns, David Blake, and Kevin Dowd for A Two-Factor Model for Stochastic Mortality with Parameter Uncertainty: Theory and Calibration.
2015 Robert I. Mehr Award
Yijia Lin and Samuel H. Cox for Securitization of Mortality Risks in Life Annuities.
2014 Robert I. Mehr Award
Michael Braun and Alexander Muermann for The Impact of Regret on the Demand for Insurance.
2013 Robert I. Mehr Award
Jeffrey R. Brown for Redistribution and Insurance: Mandatory Annuitization with Mortality Heterogeneity.
2012 Robert I. Mehr Award
Anders Grosen and Peter Lochte Jorgensen for Life Insurance Liabilities at Market Value: An Analysis of Insolvency Risk.
2011 Robert I. Mehr Award
David Blake and William Burrows for Survivor Bonds: Helping to Hedge Mortality Risk.
2010 Robert I. Mehr Award
Shaun S. Wang for A Class of Distortion Operators for Pricing Financial and Insurance Risks.
2009 Robert I. Mehr Award
J. David Cummins, Martin F. Grace, and Richard D. Phillips for Regulatory Solvency Prediction in Property-Liability Insurance: Risk-Based Capital, Audit Ratios, and Cash Flow Simulation.
2008 Robert I. Mehr Award
Richard Phillips, J. David Cummins, and Franklin Allen for Financial Pricing of Insurance in the Multiple-Line Insurance Company.
2007 Robert I. Mehr Award
Dwight Jaffee and Thomas Russell for Catastrophe Insurance, Capital Markets, and Uninsurable Risks.
2006 Robert I. Mehr Award
David W. Sommer for The Impact of Firm Risk on Property-Liability Insurance Prices.
2005 Robert I. Mehr Award
Richard A. Derrig and Kryzysztof M. Ostaszewski for Fuzzy Techniques of Pattern Recognition in Risk and Claim Classification.
2004 Robert I. Mehr Award
Patrick L. Brockett, William W. Cooper, Linda L. Golden, and Utai Pitaktong for A Neural Network Method for Obtaining an Early Warning of Insurer Insolvency.
2003 Robert I. Mehr Award
There was a tie for the award in 2003: J. David Cummins and Mary A. Weiss for The Stochastic Dominance of No-Fault Automobile Insurance, and James R. Garven and Richard D. MacMinn for The Underinvestment Problem, Bond Covenants, and Insurance.
2002 Robert I. Mehr Award
Ran BarNiv and James B. McDonald for Identifying Financial Distress in the Insurance Industry: A Synthesis of Methodological and Empirical Issues.
2001 Robert I. Mehr Award
Richard J. Butler and John D. Worrall for Claims Reporting and Risk Bearing Moral Hazard in Workers’ Compensation.
2000 Robert I. Mehr Award
Richard D. MacMinn and Li-Ming Han for Limited Liability, Corporate Value, and the Demand for Liability Insurance.