cung cấp cho độc giả một phân tích lý thuyết của các chức năng của thị trường, phân tích chung của các chức năng sống còn, sự thống trị ngẫu nhiên, và đặc tính của những thay đổi. | CHAPTER 15 Bundling of Annuities and Other Insurance Products Introduction It is well-known that monopolists who sell a number of products may find it profitable to bundle the sale of some of these products that is to sell packages of products with fixed quantity weights see for example Pindyck and Rubinfeld 2007 pp. 404-414 . In contrast in perfectly competitive equilibria with no increasing returns to scale or scope such bundling is not sustainable. The reason is that if some products are bundled by one or more firms at prices that deviate from marginal costs other firms will find it profitable to offer the bundled products separately at prices equal to marginal costs and consumers will choose to purchase the unbundled products in proportions that suit their preferences. This conclusion has to be modified under asymmetric information. We shall demonstrate below that competitive pooling equilibria may include bundled products. This is particularly relevant for the annuities market. The reason for this outcome is that bundling may reduce the extent of adverse selection and consequently tends to reduce prices. In the terminology of the previous chapter consider two products X1 and X2 whose unit costs when sold to a type a individual are c1 a and c2 a respectively. Suppose that c1 a increases while c2 a decreases in a. Examples of particular interest are annuities life insurance and health insurance. The cost of an annuity rises with longevity. The cost of life insurance on the other hand typically depends negatively under positive discounting on longevity. Similarly the costs of medical care are negatively correlated with health and longevity. Therefore selling a package composed of annuities with life insurance or with health insurance policies tends to mitigate the effects of adverse selection because when bundled the negative correlation between the costs of these products reduces the overall variation of the costs of the bundle with individual attributes .
