We use data from a large US life expectancy provider to test for asymmetric information in the secondary life insurance—or life settlements—market. We compare realized lifetimes for a subsample of settled policies relative to all (settled and nonsettled) policies, and find a positive settlement‐survival correlation indicating the existence of informational asymmetry between policyholders and investors. Estimates of the “excess hazard” associated with settling show the effect is temporary and wears off over approximately 8 years. This indicates individuals in our sample possess private information with regards to their near‐term survival prospects and make use of it, which has economic consequences for this market and beyond.

中文翻译：

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二级保险市场中信息不对称：人寿定居市场的证据

我们使用来自大型美国预期寿命提供者的数据来测试二级人寿保险（或人寿结算）市场中的不对称信息。我们将已结算保单子样本相对于所有（已结算和未结算）保单的子样本的已实现寿命进行比较，发现存在正保本与生存的相关性，表明保单持有人和投资者之间存在信息不对称。与沉降相关的“过度危险”的估计表明，这种影响是暂时的，并且会在大约8年内逐渐消失。这表明我们样本中的个人拥有有关其近期生存前景的私人信息并加以利用，这对这个市场及以后的市场都有经济影响。