https://escholarship.org/content/qt9cm846c4/qt9cm846c4.pdf

Endogenous transfers in the Prisoner's Dilemma game: An experimental test of cooperation and coordination

Purpose




This paper aims to measure the extent of effects of insurance fraud on the financial performance of insurance companies in Ghana. It also examines the causes and stringent measures that can be used to fight against insurance fraud.




Design/methodology/approach




Primary and secondary data obtained from 39 insurers in Ghana are used in this paper. A multiple regression model is used to determine the relationship between financial performance and insurance fraud variables.




Findings




The results from the model indicate that statistically insurance fraud has a significant negative effect on the annual return on assets (financial performance) of insurers in Ghana. Also, weak internal controls, poor remuneration of employees, falsified documents, deliberate acts of policyholders to profit from the insurance contract and inadequate training for independent brokers are found to be the major causes of insurance fraud in Ghana. To deter insurance fraud, effective internal fraud policy, rigorous assessment of insurance policies and claims, adequate training for independent brokers on insurance fraud and modern information technology tools are paramount in fighting this menace in Ghana.




Research limitations/implications




These findings are to have substantial impact on the techniques insurance companies will develop to fight insurance fraud and the policies that will be developed by governments and national insurance regulatory bodies to fight this menace.




Originality/value




The main value of this paper is the determination of the key variables that constitute insurance fraud and their impacts on the annual financial performance of insurance companies in Ghana.

Causes, effects and deterrence of insurance fraud: evidence from Ghana

This paper explores new motivations behind giving Specifically, it focuses on personal involvement and responsibility to explain why decision makers give positive amounts in dictatorial decisions The experiment is designed to uncover these motivations Subjects face the problem of a dictator's allocation of an indivisible amount to one of two players; indivisibility creates an extremely unequal outcome and the dictator is given a chance to correct this outcome at a cost The willingness to pay to correct the outcome is examined under different scenarios so that we learn about several features concerning preferences

The role of personal involvement and responsibility in unfair outcomes: a classroom investigation

In this paper we conduct a laboratory experiment to test the extent to which Moore and Repullo’s subgame perfect implementation mechanism induces truth-telling, both in a setting with perfect information and in a setting where buyers and sellers face a small amount of uncertainty regarding the good’s value. We find that Moore–Repullo mechanisms fail to implement truth-telling in a substantial number of cases even under perfect information about the valuation of the good. Our data further suggests that a substantial proportion of these lies are made by subjects who hold pessimistic beliefs about the rationality of their trading partners. Although the mechanism should—in theory—provide incentives for truth-telling, many buyers in fact believe that they can increase their expected monetary payoff by lying. The deviations from truth-telling become significantly more frequent and more persistent when agents face small amounts of uncertainty regarding the good’s value. Our results thus suggest that both beliefs about irrational play and small amounts of uncertainty about valuations may constitute important reasons for the absence of Moore–Repullo mechanisms in practice.

/pdf/the-role-of-bounded-rationality-and-imperfect-information-in-32jz6jsgnt.pdf

The Role of Bounded Rationality and Imperfect Information in Subgame Perfect Implementation—An Empirical Investigation

We develop a new class of two-stage mechanisms, which fully implement any social choice function under initial rationalizability in complete information environments. We show theoretically that our simultaneous report (SR) mechanisms are robust to small amounts of incomplete information about the state of nature. We also highlight the robustness of the mechanisms to a wide variety of reasoning processes and behavioral assumptions. We show experimentally that an SR mechanism performs well in inducing truth telling in both complete and incomplete information environments and that it can induce efficient investment in a two-sided holdup problem with ex ante investment.

Getting Dynamic Implementation to Work

This paper reports an experimental investigation on two mechanisms for the so-called King Solomon Dilemma, where one of them fails to implement the social choice rule dynamically. We compare the two mechanisms in terms of their welfare, incentive and learning properties.

/pdf/solomon-s-dilemma-an-experimental-study-on-dynamic-4xvs7y7emv.pdf

Anita Gantner

Papers

Solomon's dilemma: an experimental study on dynamic implementation