Einav, Liran
[Verfasser:in]
;
Finkelstein, Amy
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft];
Cullen, Mark R.
[Sonstige Person, Familie und Körperschaft]National Bureau of Economic Research
Estimating Welfare in Insurance Markets Using Variation in Prices
Erschienen:
Cambridge, Mass: National Bureau of Economic Research, October 2008
Erschienen in:NBER working paper series ; no. w14414
Umfang:
1 Online-Ressource
Sprache:
Englisch
DOI:
10.3386/w14414
Identifikator:
Reproduktionsnotiz:
Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
Entstehung:
Anmerkungen:
Mode of access: World Wide Web
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Beschreibung:
We show how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to estimate welfare in insurance markets with selection. The key observation is that the same price variation needed to identify the demand curve also identifies how costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price. With estimates of both the demand and cost curves, welfare analysis is straightforward. We illustrate our approach by applying it to the employee health insurance choices at Alcoa, Inc. We detect adverse selection in this setting but estimate that its quantitative welfare implications are small, and not obviously remediable by standard public policy tools