Do time preferences explain low health insurance take‐up?
研究通过实地调查测量菲律宾低收入群体的时间偏好和风险偏好，发现时间偏好（尤其是流动性受限时）能显著解释低保险参保率，而风险偏好则无显著关联。
Abstract Low insurance take‐up in low‐income populations is not easily explained by the standard single‐period expected utility model of insurance that overlooks the relevance of time preference when liquidity is constrained. We design field survey instruments to elicit quasi‐hyperbolic time preferences, as well as prospect theory risk preferences, and use them to examine whether time preferences explain health insurance behavior of low‐income Filipinos. Consistent with theory, those with stronger parameterized time preference are less likely to insure and the partial association is most pronounced at low wealth where liquidity is most likely to be constrained. Among those with better understanding of insurance, lower take‐up is also associated with present bias. We do not find that insurance is significantly associated with risk preferences.