India launched the ‘Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana' (RSBY) health insurance scheme for the poor in 2008. Utilising 3 waves (1999-2000, 2004-05 and 2011-12) of household level data from the nationally representative consumption expenditure survey of the National Sample Survey Organisation and...

This paper shows how in Medicare Part D insurers' gaming of the subsidy paid to low-income enrollees distorts premiums and raises the program cost. Using plan-level data from the first five years of the program, I find multiple instances of pricing strategy distortions for the largest insurers....

Long-term care (LTC) is the largest insurable risk that old-age individuals face in most western societies. However, the demand for LTC insurance is still ostensibly small in comparison to the financial risk, which is reflected in the formation of expectations of insurance coverage. One...

Risk classification refers to the use of observable characteristics by insurers to group individuals with similar expected claims, to compute the corresponding premiums, and thereby to reduce asymmetric information. Permitting risk classification may reduce informational asymmetry-induced...

There are some microinsurance schemes in Western Asia but not many. The question is why? The existence of microinsurance in Western Asia shows that it is principally feasible in this part of the world. And the large range of different products offered by the existing scheme shows that the...

I take advantage of regulatory and pricing dynamics in Medicare Part D to empirically explore interactions among adverse selection, switching costs, and regulation. I first document novel evidence of adverse selection and switching costs within Part D using detailed administrative data. I then...

Private firms often withhold information or contest scientific knowledge when public revelation could lead to costly regulations or liability. This concealment leads to negative externalities and public harm. But what if private firms' superior knowledge and self-interest could be harnessed to...

We study theoretically and empirically how consumers in an individual private long-term health insurance market with front-loaded contracts respond to newly mandated portability requirements of their old-age provisions. To foster competition, effective 2009, German legislature made the...

Die Pflegeversicherung steht unter finanziellem Druck: In den vergangenen Jahren wurden die Leistungen durch mehrere Reformen erheblich ausgeweitet. Die Leistungsausweitung zeigte sowohl bei der sozialen als auch bei der privaten Pflegeversicherung Folgen. Bei der sozialen Pflegeversicherung war...

We study biased survival expectations across two domains and examine whether such biased expectations influence health and financial behaviors. Combining individual-level longitudinal data, retrospective, and end of life data from several European countries for more than a decade, we estimate...