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....

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....

We study a general screening model that encompasses a health insurance market in which consumers have multiple dimensions of private information and a price-setting insurer (e.g., a monopolist or a social planner) offers vertically differentiated contracts. We combine theory and empirics to...