This paper studies the effects of health shocks on the demand for health insurance and annuities, precautionary saving, and the welfare implications of public policies in a simple life-cycle model. I show that when the health shock simultaneously increases health expenses and reduces longevity,...

A majority of married couples in the United States take advantage of the fact that employers often provide health insurance coverage to spouses. When the older spouses become eligible for Medicare, however, many of them can no longer provide their younger spouses with coverage. In this paper, we...

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the selfemployed, who...

We estimate the impact of a differential treatment of paid employees versus self-employed workers in a public health insurance system on the entry rate into entrepreneurship. In Germany, the public health insurance system is mandatory for most paid employees, but not for the self-employed, who...

We consider lifetime health insurance contracts in which ageing provisions are used to smooth the premium profile. The stock of capital accumulated for each individual can be split into two parts: a premium insurance and an annuitised life insurance, where the latter would be transferable...

Penalty mandates are used in many countries to encourage people to purchase health insurance. But are they effective? We use a large administrative dataset for a 10% random sample of all Australian tax-filers to study how people respond to a step-wise age-based mandate, and whether this has...