Bilateral information disclosure in adverse selection markets with nonexclusive competition *

Abstract

We study insurance markets with nonexclusive contracts, introducing bilateral endogenous information disclosure about insurance sales and purchases by firms and consumers. We show that a competitive equilibrium exists under remarkably mild conditions and charac-terize the unique equilibrium allocation. With two types of consumers the allocation con-sists of a pooling contract that maximizes the well-being of the low-risk type (along the zero-profit pooling line) plus a supplemental (undisclosed and nonexclusive) contract that brings the high-risk type to full insurance (at his own odds). We show that this outcome is extremely robust and constrained Pareto efficient. Consumer disclosure and asymmetric equilibrium information flows are critical in supporting the equilibrium.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.