We examine the impact of educational attainment on fertility and mating market outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity design, we exploit an extension of the compulsory schooling age from 15 to 16 in 1972 in the UK. The change was binding for a quarter of the population. Simple plots of the...

In this essay, we review the theory and evidence concerning selection in competitive health insurance markets and discuss the common policy tools used to address the problems it creates. We begin by outlining some important but often misunderstood differences between two types of conceptual...

We study insurers' use of prescription drug formularies to screen consumers in the ACA Health Insurance Exchanges. We begin by showing that Exchange risk adjustment and reinsurance succeed in neutralizing selection incentives for most, but not all, consumer types. A minority of consumers,...

In most US health insurance markets, plans face strong incentives to "upcode" the patient diagnoses they report to the regulator, as these affect the risk-adjusted payments plans receive. We show that enrollees in private Medicare plans generate 6% to 16% higher diagnosis-based risk scores than...

A central question in the debate over privatized Medicare is whether increased government payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans generate lower premiums for consumers or higher profits for producers. Using difference-in-differences variation brought about by a sharp legislative...

In many markets, including the new U.S. Exchanges, health insurance plans are paid by risk-adjusted capitation, in some markets combined with reinsurance and other payment mechanisms. This paper proposes three metrics for analyzing the insurer incentives embedded in these complex payment...

Many employers have implemented dependent verification (DV) programs, which aim to reduce employee benefits costs by ensuring that ineligible persons are not enrolled in their health plan as dependents. We evaluate a DV program using a panel of health plan enrollment data from a large,...