Essays on Insurance and Taxation

Essays on Insurance and Taxation
Author: Marika Ilona Cabral
Publisher: Stanford University
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

This dissertation consists of four distinct essays. In an essay entitled "Claim Timing and Ex Post Adverse Selection: Evidence from Dental 'Insurance, ' " I explore the impact of strategic timing on insurance market allocations. If people can delay a claim just long enough to buy more insurance coverage in anticipation of it, severe adverse selection may result, and in extreme cases, this can lead to the complete unraveling of an insurance market. I study these forces by analyzing dental treatments and insurance, with the goal of understanding insurance in the market for dental care and also revealing lessons that apply to insurance markets more broadly. Using rich claim-level data from a large firm, my analysis reveals that the strategic delay of treatment and the associated adverse selection may be an important factor in explaining why so few people have dental coverage in the US and why typical dental "insurance" contracts provide so little insurance. More generally, my results suggest that insurance products without contract features designed to limit coverage for strategically delayed costs (e.g., open-enrollment periods, pricing pre-existing conditions) may generate unraveling. An essay entitled "The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts" (with Caroline Hoxby), explores the relationship between the salience of the property tax and observed property tax rates. We hypothesize that high salience explains the unpopularity of the property tax, the level of the property tax, and prevalence of property tax revolts. To identify variation in the salience of the property tax over local jurisdictions and over time, we exploit conditionally random variation in tax escrow, a method of paying the property tax that makes it much less salient. We find that areas in which the property tax is less salient are areas in which property taxes are higher and property tax revolts are less likely to occur. In an essay entitled "Private Coverage and Public Costs: Identifying the Effect of Private Supplemental Insurance on Medicare Spending" (with Neale Mahoney), we explore the impact of private supplemental insurance on Medicare spending. Private supplemental insurance to "fill the gaps" of Medicare, known as Medigap, is very popular. We estimate the impact of this supplemental insurance on total medical spending using an instrumental variables strategy that leverages discontinuities in Medigap premiums at state boundaries. Our estimates suggest that Medigap increases medical spending by 57 percent---or about 40 percent more than previous estimates suggest. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that a 20 percent tax on premiums would generate combined revenue and savings of 6.2 percent of Medicare baseline costs. An essay entitled "The Effect of Insurance Coverage on Preventive Care" (with Mark Cullen), explores the effect of insurance coverage on preventive care utilization. Using health insurance claims data from a large company, this paper examines the implementation of an insurance benefit design which differentially increased the marginal price of curative care (non-preventive care) while decreasing the marginal price of prevention. We examine the effect of the differential price change on the use of preventive procedures. We reveal evidence consistent with an important negative cross-price effect; that is, increases in the price of curative care can depress preventive care utilization.

Essays in Macrodynamic Economics

Essays in Macrodynamic Economics
Author: Kenneth K. Kurihara
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1972-06-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1438409826

Part 1 looks at the perspective and prospective transition from macrostatics to macrodynamics. Part 2 examines the analytical and operational problems of advanced economies in varying stages of their development and with changing institutional and technological complexes. It also discusses boldly such controversial and paradoxical issues as the dichotomy between the post-Keynesian and neo-classical approach, the clash between macroeconomic desiderata, the incongruity between internal and external equilibria, the contradiction between laissez-faire and the policy-orientated patterns of development, and the contrast between macro- and multisectoral models of growth. The possibility (and desirability) of adding, to both Keynes's General Theory and post-Keynesian dynamics, such new dimensions as are attuned to the pressing and mounting needs of our restless society is discussed in both Parts. The ideas put forward by Professor Kurihara are intended to stimulate further hypothesis-making in the perplexing yet intriguing field of economic development. The book should prove useful to serious (and curious) students of 'dynamic economics' and 'development planning' not only in advanced economies but also in developing countries.

Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran

Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran
Author: Alexander Chudik
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2022-01-18
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1802620656

The collection of chapters in Volume 43 Part B of Advances in Econometrics serves as a tribute to one of the most innovative, influential, and productive econometricians of his generation, Professor M. Hashem Pesaran.