Tag Archives: Insurance

Inferring Risk Perceptions and Preferences using Choice from Insurance Menus: Theory and Evidence

Inferring Risk Perceptions and Preferences using Choice from Insurance Menus: Theory and Evidence

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New working paper:

Inferring Risk Perceptions and Preferences using Choice from Insurance Menus: Theory and Evidence (joint with Philipp Kircher, Johannes Spinnewijn, and Amanda Starc)

Demand for insurance can be driven by high risk aversion or high risk. We show how to separately identify risk preferences and risk types using only choices from menus of insurance plans. Our revealed preference approach does not rely on rational expectations, nor does it require access to claims data. We show what can be learned non-parametrically from variation in insurance plans, offered separately to random cross-sections or offered as part of the same menu to one cross-section. We prove that our approach allows for full identification in the textbook model with binary risks and extend our results to continuous risks. We illustrate our approach using the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange, where choices provide informative bounds on the type distributions, especially for risks, but do not allow us to reject homogeneity in preferences.

An individual mandate, or a tax? How policy is articulated matters.

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Under the Affordable Care Act, people must buy health insurance  or pay a financial penalty. Framing that policy as a mandate to buy health insurance versus as a tax on not purchasing health insurance can matter.

In Ericson and Kessler (JEBO 2016), we describe the results of a year-long experiment in which a series of participants reported their probability of purchasing health insurance either under a mandate or a financially equivalent tax.

In late 2011 and early 2012, articulating the policy as a mandate, rather than a financially equivalent tax, increased probability of insurance purchase by 10.6 percentage points — an effect comparable to a $1000 decrease in annual premiums. However, the controversy over the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate provision that changed the political discourse during the year 2012. We document the rise of this controversy. After the controversy, the mandate is no more effective than the tax.

For more, see:

How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

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Product Standardization on the Mass. HIX

Product Standardization on the Mass. HIX

Standardization of complex products is touted as improving consumer decisions and intensifying price competition, but evidence on standardization is limited. We examine a natural experiment: the standardization of health insurance plans on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange.

Pre-standardization, firms had wide latitude to design plans. A regulatory change then required firms to standardize the cost-sharing parameters of plans and offer seven defined options; plans remained differentiated on network, brand, and price. Standardization led consumers on the HIX to choose more generous health insurance plans and led to substantial shifts in brands’ market shares.

We decompose the sources of this shift into three effects: price, product availability, and valuation. A discrete choice model shows that standardization changed the weights consumers attach to plan attributes (a valuation effect), increasing the salience of tier. The availability effect explains the bulk of the brand shifts. Standardization increased consumer welfare in our models, but firms captured some of the surplus by reoptimizing premiums. We use hypothetical choice experiments to replicate the effect of standardization and conduct alternative counterfactuals.

Link to Full Working Paper: How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

 

How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

Posted on by • Posted in Research-Feature • Tagged , , , , , ,
Product Standardization on the Mass. HIX

Product Standardization on the Mass. HIX

Standardization of complex products is touted as improving consumer decisions and intensifying price competition, but evidence on standardization is limited. We examine a natural experiment: the standardization of health insurance plans on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange.

Link to Full Working Paper: How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

Pre-standardization, firms had wide latitude to design plans. A regulatory change then required firms to standardize the cost-sharing parameters of plans and offer seven defined options; plans remained differentiated on network, brand, and price. Standardization led consumers on the HIX to choose more generous health insurance plans and led to substantial shifts in brands’ market shares.

We decompose the sources of this shift into three effects: price, product availability, and valuation. A discrete choice model shows that standardization changed the weights consumers attach to plan attributes (a valuation effect), increasing the salience of tier. The availability effect explains the bulk of the brand shifts. Standardization increased consumer welfare in our models, but firms captured some of the surplus by reoptimizing premiums. We use hypothetical choice experiments to replicate the effect of standardization and conduct alternative counterfactuals.

Invest-then-Harvest Pricing in Medicare Part D

Invest-then-Harvest Pricing in Medicare Part D

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Individuals face switching frictions in many products, and insurance exchanges are no exception. In a paper published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, I show that initial defaults have lasting effects in the Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance exchange. Since firms cannot commit to future prices, they should respond to inertia by raising prices on existing enrollees, while introducing cheaper alternative plans. I show that the market displays this pattern: older plans in this market are about 10% more expensive than comparable newly introduced plans.

For more:

Pricing Regulation and Imperfect Competition on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

Pricing Regulation and Imperfect Competition on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

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Review of Economics and Statistics, 2015. (joint with Amanda Starc). Also see NBER Working Paper 18089.

Insurance markets often contain pricing regulation, such as community rating. I examine how pricing regulation interacts with imperfect competition.

When markets are imperfectly competitive,  these regulations link prices for consumers that differ not only in costs, but also in preferences.  Tightening community rating regulation doesn’t merely move the price toward the average cost, since firms price to the marginal enrollee. As a result, community rating regulation can affect firm profits and market efficiency. We look at the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange (HIX), and show that younger individuals are much more price sensitive than older individuals.  Thus, insurers should charge higher markups on older individuals. Tighter community rating restrictions transfer money from younger consumers to older consumers, but also from firm profits to consumer surplus.

An individual mandate, or a tax? How policy is articulated matters.

An individual mandate, or a tax? How policy is articulated matters.

Posted on by • Posted in Research-Feature • Tagged , , , , , ,

Under the Affordable Care Act, people must buy health insurance  or pay a financial penalty. Framing that policy as a mandate to buy health insurance versus as a tax on not purchasing health insurance can matter.

In Ericson and Kessler (JEBO 2016), we describe the results of a year-long experiment in which a series of participants reported their probability of purchasing health insurance either under a mandate or a financially equivalent tax.

In late 2011 and early 2012, articulating the policy as a mandate, rather than a financially equivalent tax, increased probability of insurance purchase by 10.6 percentage points — an effect comparable to a $1000 decrease in annual premiums. However, the controversy over the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate provision that changed the political discourse during the year 2012. We document the rise of this controversy. After the controversy, the mandate is no more effective than the tax.

For more, see: