Moral Hazard in a Mutual Health-Insurance System: German Knappschaften, 1867–1914

Arbeitspapier

The Knappschaft underlies Bismarck's sickness and accident insurance legislation (1883 and 1884), which in turn forms the basis of the German social-insurance system today and, indirectly, many social-insurance systems around the world. The Knappschaften were formed in the medieval period to provide sickness, accident, and death benefits for miners. By the mid-nineteenth century, participation in the Knappschaft was compulsory for workers in mines and related occupations, and the range and generosity of benefits had expanded considerably. Each Knappschaft was locally controlled and self-funded, and their admirers saw in them the ability to use local knowledge and good incentives to deliver benefits at low cost. This paper focuses on a problem central to any insurance system, and one that plagued the Knappschaften as they grew larger in the later nineteenth century: the problem of moral hazard. Replacement pay for sick miners made it attractive, on the margin, for miners to invent or exaggerate conditions that made it impossible for them to work. Here we outline the moral hazard problem the Knappschaften faced as well as the internal mechanisms they devised to control it. We then use econometric models to demonstrate that those mechanisms were at best imperfect.

Angaben zum Objekt

• ISBN: 978-3-86788-182-1
• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Ruhr Economic Papers ; No. 163

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913 ; Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: Europe: Pre-1913 ; Social Security and Public Pensions ; National Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs ; Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
• Thema: Sickness insurance ; moral hazard ; malingering ; Knappschaft ; social insurance ; Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung ; Sozialversicherung ; Moral Hazard ; Bergbauberufe ; Wirtschaftsgeschichte ; Deutschland (bis 1945)

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Guinnane, Timothy W. ; Streb, Jochen
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI)
• (wo): Essen
• (wann): 2010

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/36985
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ