A distinctive feature of the health insurance market in the U.S. is the restriction of group insurance availability to the workplace. This has a number of important implications for the functioning of the labor market, through mobility from job-to-job or in and out of the labor force, wage...

Recent litigation against major tobacco companies culminated in a Master Settlement Agreement' (MSA) under which the participating companies agreed to compensate most states for Medicaid expenses. We outline the terms of the settlement and analyze whether it was a move toward economic efficiency...

We consider the role of spousal labor supply as insurance against spells of unemployment. Standard theory suggests that women should work more when their husbands are out of work (the Added Worker Effect or AWE), but there has been little empirical support for this contention. We too find little...

The traditional normative analysis of government policy towards addictive bads is carried out in the context of a 'rational addiction' model, whereby the only role for government is in correcting the external costs of consumption of such goods. But available evidence is at least as consistent,...

This paper examines the implications of a 'major-risk' approach to health insurance using data from the National Medical Expenditure Survey. We study the impact of switching from existing coverage to a policy with a 50 percent coinsurance rate and 10 percent of income limit on out-of-pocket...

Previous research on unemployment insurance (UI) has focused on the costs of the program, in terms of the distorting effects of generous UI benefits on worker and firm behavior. For assessing the optimal size of an unemployment insurance program, however, it is also important to gauge the...