In many markets insurers are barred from price discrimination based on con- sumer characteristics like age, gender, and medical history. In this paper, I build on a recent literature to show why such policies are inefficient if consumers differ in their willingness-to-pay for insurance...

In this paper we investigate the possible presence of switching costs when consumers are offered the opportunity to change their basic health insurance provider. We focus on the specific case of Switzerland which implemented a pure form of competition in basic health insurance markets. We...

This paper demonstrates the existence of adverse selection in the group insurance market with no individual choice. We provide evidence against the “conventional wisdom” that group insurance mitigates adverse selection because of the mixture of high risks and low risks. We show, however,...

Standard policies to correct market power and selection can be misguided when these two forces co-exist. Using a calibrated model of employer-sponsored health insurance, we show that the risk adjustment commonly used by employers to offset adverse selection often reduces the amount of...

Policies to correct market power and selection can be misguided when these forces co-exist. We build a model of symmetric imperfect competition in selection markets that parameterizes the degree of market power and selection. We use graphical price-theoretic reasoning to characterize the...