Publications
Publications
- Review of Economics and Statistics
Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market
By: Santosh Anagol, Shawn Cole and Shayak Sarkar
Abstract
We conduct a series of field experiments to evaluate the quality of advice provided by life insurance agents in India. Agents overwhelmingly recommend unsuitable, strictly dominated products, which provide high commissions to the agent. Agents cater to the beliefs of uninformed consumers, even when those beliefs are wrong. We also find that agents appear to focus on maximizing the amount of premiums (and therefore commissions) that customers pay, as opposed to focusing on how much insurance coverage customers need. A natural experiment requiring disclosure of commissions for a specific product results in agents recommending alternative products with high commissions but no disclosure requirement. A follow-up agent survey sheds light on the extent to which poor advice reflects both the commission incentives as well as agents' limited product knowledge.
Keywords
Citation
Anagol, Santosh, Shawn Cole, and Shayak Sarkar. "Understanding the Advice of Commissions-Motivated Agents: Evidence from the Indian Life Insurance Market." Review of Economics and Statistics 99, no. 1 (March 2017).
About The Author
