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Author: Richard Domurat Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
This dissertation includes three chapters on the health insurance markets established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as exchanges. Chapter 1 estimates the demand for each plan in the California exchange using a discrete choice model. The model incorporates heterogeneity in consumer preferences and in product characteristics, including hospital and primary care physician (PCP) networks. Endogeneity of prices is addressed using networking hospital costs as instruments, and prices for any given plan can vary across consumers within a market. Consumers are highly sensitive to prices, with market shares declining by 3%-5% for just a $1 increase in the premium. Demand also responds to hospital and PCP networks, but to a relatively small degree. Along the take-up margin, a $1 increase in premium subsidy increases take-up by 1.4%. Chapter 2 uses a structural model of demand and supply to examine how two insurance market regulations--community rating and risk adjustment--affect prices and enrollment in the ACA exchange in California. Without risk adjustment, community rating in the ACA would lead to a significant reduction in enrollment in desirable plans and in take-up overall. Risk adjustment under the ACA roughly restores relative shares across plans to what they would be without community rating; however, the reduction in take-up is not restored. An alternative risk adjustment method can increase enrollment by 3.0% and would have little impact on government spending. Chapter 3, written jointly with Isaac Menashe and Wesley Yin, examines the impact of information on insurance take-up in the ACA. We exploit experimental variation in the information mailed to 87,000 households in California's exchange to study the role of frictions in insurance take-up. We find that a basic reminder of the enrollment deadline raised enrollment by 1.4 pp (or 16 percent). Compared to the reminder alone, also reporting personalized subsidy benefits increases take-up among low-income individuals, but decreases take-up among higher-income individuals. This is despite reminder-only recipients eventually observing their subsidies before purchase. Finally, the letter interventions induced healthier individuals into the market, lowering aggregate spending risk by 5.9 percent, suggesting these interventions can improve both enrollment and average market risk.
Author: Richard Domurat Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
This dissertation includes three chapters on the health insurance markets established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), known as exchanges. Chapter 1 estimates the demand for each plan in the California exchange using a discrete choice model. The model incorporates heterogeneity in consumer preferences and in product characteristics, including hospital and primary care physician (PCP) networks. Endogeneity of prices is addressed using networking hospital costs as instruments, and prices for any given plan can vary across consumers within a market. Consumers are highly sensitive to prices, with market shares declining by 3%-5% for just a $1 increase in the premium. Demand also responds to hospital and PCP networks, but to a relatively small degree. Along the take-up margin, a $1 increase in premium subsidy increases take-up by 1.4%. Chapter 2 uses a structural model of demand and supply to examine how two insurance market regulations--community rating and risk adjustment--affect prices and enrollment in the ACA exchange in California. Without risk adjustment, community rating in the ACA would lead to a significant reduction in enrollment in desirable plans and in take-up overall. Risk adjustment under the ACA roughly restores relative shares across plans to what they would be without community rating; however, the reduction in take-up is not restored. An alternative risk adjustment method can increase enrollment by 3.0% and would have little impact on government spending. Chapter 3, written jointly with Isaac Menashe and Wesley Yin, examines the impact of information on insurance take-up in the ACA. We exploit experimental variation in the information mailed to 87,000 households in California's exchange to study the role of frictions in insurance take-up. We find that a basic reminder of the enrollment deadline raised enrollment by 1.4 pp (or 16 percent). Compared to the reminder alone, also reporting personalized subsidy benefits increases take-up among low-income individuals, but decreases take-up among higher-income individuals. This is despite reminder-only recipients eventually observing their subsidies before purchase. Finally, the letter interventions induced healthier individuals into the market, lowering aggregate spending risk by 5.9 percent, suggesting these interventions can improve both enrollment and average market risk.
Author: Petra Steinorth Publisher: VVW GmbH ISBN: 3862980790 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
"Petra Steinorth präsentiert in ihrer in englischer Sprache vorgelegten kumulativen Dissertationsschrift drei theoretische Modelle, die Versicherungsentscheidungen über mehrere Perioden und bei privater Information seitens der Versicherungsnehmer ökonomisch untersuchen. Die Dissertation leistet einen wichtigen Beitrag zur theoretischen Forschung im Bereich Versicherungsökonomie, da insbesondere zu mehrperiodigen Fragestellungen noch großer Forschungsbedarf besteht: Der Beitrag ""Impact of Health Savings Accounts on Precautionary Savings, Demand for Health Insurance and Prevention Effort"" untersucht den Einfluss von steuerlich begünstigten Gesundheitssparkonten auf das Sparverhalten, die Nachfrage nach Krankenversicherung und Prävention. Im zweiten Beitrag ""Yes, No, Perhaps - Explaining the Demand for Risk Classification Insurance with Imperfect Private Information"" wird untersucht, welche Granularität der Risikoklassifizierung optimal ist, wenn die Versicherungsnehmer unvollständige private Information über ihren zukünftigen Risikotyp haben. Der dritte Beitrag ""The Demand for Enhanced Annuities"" analysiert die Reaktion des Marktes auf die Einführung von sogenannten Enhanced Annuities. Dabei handelt es sich um Rentenversicherungsprodukte, die die individuelle Lebenserwartung bei der Tarifierung berücksichtigen. Die wissenschaftliche Arbeit ist auch für Mitarbeiter in Versicherungsunternehmen von Interesse, da sie wichtige Bereiche des Produktmanagements in der Lebens- und Krankenversicherung behandelt. Petra Steinorth ́s dissertation consists of three theoretical models, which all examine the economics of selected multi-period insurance decisions with private information on the part of the insured. The thesis makes an important contribution to insurance economics literature as multi-period problems have not yet been widely studied. The article ""Impact of Health Savings Accounts on Precautionary Savings, Demand for Health Insurance and Prevention Effort"" investigates how tax incentives like health savings accounts influence savings for medical costs, the demand for health insurance and ex ante moral hazard. The second article ""Yes, no, perhaps - Explaining the Demand for Risk Classification Insurance"" examines the optimal risk classification in case the insured have incomplete private information regarding their future risk type. The third article ""The Demand for Enhanced Annuities"" analyzes the market reaction to the introduction of so-called enhanced annuities, which are annuities that take individual factors influencing life expectancy into account for pricing. The scientific dissertation is also of interest to insurance practitioners as it examines important issues in the field of health and life insurance product management."
Author: Zhen Liu Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 151
Book Description
The first part of the dissertation investigates cost experience in the US life and health insurance industry over the period 1998-2012. We generally test the difference in expenses among different distribution systems, which mainly consists of independent agency, broker, career agency, exclusive agency, and direct writing. We check to see if cost, revenue and profit efficiency differences are associated with different distribution methods. Cost, revenue, and profit efficiencies are estimated by Data Envelopment Analysis. Unlike the results in the property and liability insurance industry, the cost difference is insignificant among distribution systems. Results on cost efficiency and revenue efficiency support the market imperfection hypothesis, which says that the market imperfections such as entry barriers, price regulation, or search costs cause the coexistence of different distribution systems. The second part of the dissertation examines the relationship between mergers and acquisitions (M&As), and underwriting cycles in the P-L insurance industry. In a soft market, capital is relatively high. This leads to an increase in the number of M&A transactions and the probability that managers conduct non-value-increasing M&As. We test this proposition by analyzing the associations between volumes of M&A deals, and returns associated with M&As and underwriting cycle. The results show that the numbers of M&As are negatively related with the premium rate changes and positively related with changes in the combined ratio. We also find that the cumulative abnormal returns around the announcement date of M&As are smaller for the shareholders of insurer acquirers in a soft market. Even more, we find that the market reaction of M&As is less sensitive to agency problems in a hard market than in a soft market.
Author: Henri Loubergé Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 9400921837 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 275
Book Description
Orio Giarini The "Geneva Association" (International Association for the Study of Risk and Insurance Economics) was founded in 1973. The main goal was to stimulate and organize objective research in the field of risk, uncertainty, and insurance, in a world in which such issues were clearly becoming of greater and greater relevance for all economic actors. This was a pioneer ing effort, especially as economic theory and the teaching of economics were still anchored to the key notion of general equilibrium under an assumption of certainty. Thus, we had to start our work almost from scratch. One of the first initiatives was to bring together in Geneva, in June of 1973, all the academics in Europe already involved in risk and insurance economics. We found eight from five different countries who never had met before. This seminar chaired by Raymond Barre, the first president of The Geneva Association, was the first of an annual series that became known as the seminar of "The European Group of Risk and Insurance Economists." Since then more than 100 economists from most European countries as well as participants from two other continents and in particular from the United States have taken part in this seminar.
Author: Casey Rothschild Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 126
Book Description
(Cont.) In particular, it shows that a government which can provide pooled-price social insurance can relax restrictions on characteristic-based pricing while implementing a "compensatory" social insurance policy in a way that ensures no individual is harmed while some individuals gain. Chapter 3 is collaborative work with James Poterba and Amy Finkelstein. It starts from the observation that the "compensatory" social insurance policies identified in Chapter 2 are not typically employed in practice. When they are not, permitting characteristic-based pricing has both efficiency and distributional consequences vis a vis banning such pricing. We develop a methodology for empirically measuring the magnitudes of both consequences. We apply this methodology to evaluate the hypothetical imposition of a ban on gender-based pricing in the U.K. annuity market. We estimate that this imposition will re-distribute significant resources from short-lived men to long-lived women. The amount of re-distribution may be up to 50% less than would be predicted without accounting for the endogenous market response, however.
Author: Nathaniel Hendren Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 138
Book Description
This thesis studies the impact of private information on the existence of insurance markets. In the first chapter, I study the case of insurance rejections. Across a wide set of non-group insurance markets, applicants are rejected based on observable, often high-risk, characteristics. I explore private information as a potential cause by developing and testing a model in which agents have private information about their risk. I derive a new no-trade result that can theoretically explain how private information could cause rejections. I use the no-trade condition to generate measures of the barrier to trade private information imposes. I develop a new empirical methodology to estimate these measures that uses subjective probability elicitations as noisy measures of agents' beliefs. I apply the approach to three non-group markets: long-term care (LTC), disability, and life insurance. Consistent with the predictions of the theory, in all three settings I find significant evidence of private information for those who would be rejected; I find that they have more private information than those who can purchase insurance; and I find that it is enough to cause a complete absence of trade. This presents the first empirical evidence that private information leads to a complete absence of trade. In the second chapter, I show that private information explains the absence of a private unemployment insurance market. I provide the empirical evidence that a private UI market would be afflicted by private information and suggest the amount of private information is sufficient to explain a complete absence of trade. I present evidence a private market would still not arise even if the government stopped providing unemployment benefits. Finally, in the third chapter I use the empirical and theoretical tools developed in the first chapter to explore the impact of an adjusted community rating policy that would force insurance companies to only price based on age. My results suggest such a policy would completely unravel the LTC insurance market. Not only would welfare not be improved for those who are currently rejected, but the regulation would prevent the healthy from being able to purchase long-term care insurance.
Author: Cameron McNeill Ellis Publisher: ISBN: Category : Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
The first chapter of this dissertation considers the welfare effects of increasing access to secondary markets in life insurance. In this chapter, I propose and estimate a life-cycle savings model for the life insurance lapse decision with dynamic, heterogeneous bequest motives. I then perform a counterfactual analysis with competitive secondary markets and find them to be Pareto improving for my sample with an average value increase to consumer's welfare by $1,346 per policy-holder. The second chapter of this dissertation considers how optional two-part tariffs can serve as a signaling device for life insurance contracts. I test for consumer self-selection using detailed, policy-level data within the context of life insurance backdating I am able to identify, through a control function approach, the information about lapse risk a consumer reveals when they choose to backdate. I find consumers a) who are less likely to lapse self-select into the two-part tariff pricing structure and b) exhibit behavior consistent with sunk cost bias. The final chapter of this dissertation considers how Medicaid expansion can affect private insurance markets. I use policy-level data from the Health Insurance Exchanges to identify and estimate the effects of Medicaid expansion on the private health insurance market premiums. I find that expanding Medicaid reduces average monthly premiums by $32.4, a decrease of 11.86%.
Author: Richard Domurat
Author: Richard Domurat
Author: George William Blazenko
Author: Petra Steinorth
Author: Zhen Liu
Author: Henri Loubergé
Author: Casey Rothschild
Author: Nathaniel Hendren
Author: Przemysław Zbigniew Rymaszewski
Author: Cameron McNeill Ellis
Author: Stanford University. Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences