Incomplete Markets - Possible Reasons For Market Incompleteness

Possible Reasons For Market Incompleteness

Despite the latest ongoing innovation in financial and insurance markets, markets remain incomplete. While several contingent claims are traded routinely against many states such as insurance policies, futures, financial options, among others, the set of outcomes is far greater than the set of claims.

In practice the idea of a state contingent security for every possible realization of nature seems unrealistic. For example, if the economy lacks the institutions to guarantee that the contracts are enforced, it is unlikely that agents will either sell or buy these securities.

Another common way to motivate the absence of state contingent securities is asymmetric information between agents. For example, the realization of labor income for a given individual is private information and it cannot be known without cost by anyone else. If an insurance company cannot verify the individual's labor income, the former would always have the incentive to claim a low realization of income and the market would collapse.