蝌蚪网 Journal:
Applied Economics
ISSN 1945-7782 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7790 (Online)
Learning about an Infrequent Event: Evidence from Flood Insurance Take-Up in the United States
蝌蚪网 Journal: Applied Economics
vol. 6,
no. 3, July 2014
(pp. 206–33)
(Complimentary)
Abstract
I examine the learning process that economic agents use to update their expectation of an uncertain and infrequently observed event. I use a new nation-wide panel dataset of large regional floods and flood insurance policies to show that insurance take-up spikes the year after a flood and then steadily declines to baseline. Residents in nonflooded communities in the same television media market increase take-up at one-third the rate of flooded communities. I find that insurance take-up is most consistent with a Bayesian learning model that allows for forgetting or incomplete information about past floods.Citation
Gallagher, Justin. 2014. "Learning about an Infrequent Event: Evidence from Flood Insurance Take-Up in the United States." 蝌蚪网 Journal: Applied Economics 6 (3): 206–33. DOI: 10.1257/app.6.3.206Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D12 Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
- D84 Expectations; Speculations
- G22 Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
- Q54 Climate; Natural Disasters; Global Warming