This paper examines the standard test for asymmetric information in insurance markets: that its presence will result in a positive correlation between insurance coverage and risk occurrence. We show empirically that while there is no evidence of this positive correlation in the long-term care...

We develop a dynamic model of international business-to-business transactions in which sellers and buyers search for each other, with the probability of a match depending on both individual and aggregate search effort. Fit to customs records on U.S. apparel imports, the model captures key...

Long-term care expenditures constitute one of the largest uninsured financial risks facing the elderly in the United States. This paper provides an overview of the economic and policy issues surrounding insuring long-term care expenditure risk. Through this lens we also discuss the likely impact...

The population of the United States, as with the rest of the world, is aging rapidly, with the most rapid growth occurring among the age 85 and older population, those who rely most on long-term care. In this chapter, we review the delivery and financing of long-term care in the U.S. We show...

In the United States, households obtain health insurance through distinct market segments. We explore the economics of this segmentation by comparing coverage provided through small employers versus the individual marketplace. Using data from Oregon, we find households with group coverage spend...

We study how risk management through hedging impacts firms and competition among firms in the life insurance industry - an industry with over 7 Trillion in assets and over 1,000 private and public firms. We show that firms that are likely to face costly external finance increase hedging after...

We examine whether and to what extent consolidation in the U.S. health insurance industry is leading to higher employer-sponsored insurance premiums. We make use of a proprietary, panel dataset of employer-sponsored healthplans enrolling over 10 million Americans annually between 1998 and 2006...

Since the inception of Medicare Part D in 2006, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and regulatory changes have led to increased concentration and reduced plan variety in the standalone prescription drug plan (PDP) portion of the market. We examine how this industry consolidation affects Medicare...

While the traditional role of insurers is to provide protection against idiosyncratic risks of individuals, insurers themselves face substantial uncertainties due to aggregate shocks. To prevent insurers from passing through aggregate risks to consumers, governments have increasingly adopted...