I examine the problem of writing guaranteed renewable health insurance in the presence of medical spending growth. Prior research suggests that the growth and difficulty in forecasting future medical costs is an impediment to multiperiod health insurance, where contract reserves are used to...

In developing economies, health shocks play a significant role in instigating and sustaining poverty. The impact of high catastrophic out-of-pocket health expenditure also fosters a culture in which people decide not to use services because they cannot afford either the direct costs, such as for...

Examining committee: Colleen Chrisinger

Obtaining health insurance through an employer pools risk, but may lead to moral hazard, where employees with more coverage seek care valued below cost, and adverse selection, where the unhealthy choose more generous plans, driving up premiums. In the first essay, I model the decision to choose...

The expansion of Medicare benefits to include coverage for prescription drug (Part D) is the largest since the program's inception. The benefit is delivered through private insurers competing for beneficiaries by offering a variety of options and features. Understanding preferences of...

Employers throughout West Michigan continue to feel the crushing impact of rising healthcare costs. Nationally, year-over-year increases in health insurance premium costs have exceeded the overall inflation rate since 2000 by about a four-to-one margin. Figure 1-1 highlights the magnitude of...

The paper deals with margins of entrepreneurship where small business owners are almost working ontheir own having no or just a few employees and where one can find also people working with lowreturns and having firms without stability or prosperous dynamics. However, even the area...

This dissertation shows how the transformation of social ownership to private ownership affected the behavior of firms and entrepreneurship in selected former Yugoslav countries. The goal was to determine whether firms’ objective remains the maximization of income per worker and, on the other...

This dissertation explores how economic, organizational, and personal factors affect self-employment transitions, occupational decisions, and firm formation activities of individuals at different positions in the skill distribution. The first essay of my dissertation studies how local...

In this paper we study the evolution of income inequality for employees and self-employed workers. We highlight the importance of separately analyzing these different sources of income to gain a broader understanding of inequality. Using Spanish panel data on income and consumption from the ECPF...