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on Insurance Economics |
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Issue of 2015‒06‒05
three papers chosen by Soumitra K. Mallick Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management |
| By: | Christian Bünnings; Hendrik Schmitz; Harald Tauchmann; Nicolas R. Ziebarth |
| Abstract: | This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary benefit provision on top of federally mandated benefits, and (iii) health plan prices for almost all German health plans. Mixed logit models incorporate a total of 1,700 health plan choices with more than 50 choice sets for each individual. The findings suggest that, compared to prices, health plan service quality and supplemental benefits play a minor role in making a health plan choice. |
| Keywords: | Fee-for-service; capitation; mixed payment systems; physician altruism; laboratory experiment |
| JEL: | D12 H51 I11 I13 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0545&r=ias |
| By: | Lars P. Metzger |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a contest in which players with unobservable types may form an alliance in a pre-stage of the game to join their forces and compete for a prize. We characterize the pure strategy equilibria of this game of incomplete information. We show that if the formation of an alliance is voluntary, players do not reveal private information in the process of alliance formation in any equilibrium. In this case there exists a pooling equilibrium without alliances with a unique effort choice in the contest and there exist equilibria in which all types prefer to form an alliance. If the formation of an alliance can be enforced by one player with positive probability there exists an equilibrium in which only the low types prefer to form an alliance. |
| Keywords: | Service quality; non-essential benefits; prices; health plan switching; German sickness funds; SOEP |
| JEL: | C72 D72 D74 D82 |
| Date: | 2015–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0544&r=ias |
| By: | Sofia Amaral-Garcia; Paola Bertoli; Veronica Grembi |
| Abstract: | Using data from 2002 to 2009 inpatient discharge records on deliveries in the Italian region of Piedmont, we assess the impact of an increase in malpractice pressure on obstetric practices, as identified by the introduction of experience-rated malpractice liability insurance. Our identification strategy exploits the exogenous location of public hospitals in court districts with and without schedules for noneconomic damages. We perform difference-in- differences and difference-in-discontinuities analyses. We find that the increase in medical malpractice pressure is associated with a decrease in the probability of performing a C-section from 2.3 to 3.7 percentage points (7% to 11.6% at the mean value of C-section) with no consequences for a broadly defined measure of complications or neonatal outcomes. We show that these results are robust to the different methodologies and can be explained by a reduction in the discretion of obstetric decision making rather than by patient cream skimming. |
| Keywords: | experience rating; difference-in-discontinuities; scheduled damages; medical liability insurance; C-sections; |
| JEL: | K13 K32 I13 |
| Date: | 2015–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cer:papers:wp540&r=ias |