How the demand for insurance became behavioral

Abstract Recent developments in research on insurance reveal a shift towards behavioral insurance. Decisions remain rational but in a broader framework of reference that accounts for the role of loss aversion, ambiguity, framing, reference points, and emotions in people's decisions. In this special issue, many of those points are discussed in connection with the demand for insurance. Some of the major insurance puzzles, such as insufficient demand for coverage, the crowding-out effect between insurance mechanisms, and the opportunism in the insurance market that arises from asymmetric information are covered. This paper introduces 24 texts on behavioral insurance.