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on Insurance Economics |
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Issue of 2017‒03‒05
eight papers chosen by Soumitra K. Mallick Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management |
| By: | Rashad, Ahmed Shoukry; Sharaf, Mesbah Fathy; Mansour, Elhussien I. |
| Abstract: | We assess the impact of health insurance on the utilization of maternal health care services in Egypt. A propensity score matching is used to control for baseline differences in the characteristics of the insured and uninsured women, to determine the difference in health care utilization between the two groups that is attributed solely to the health insurance coverage. The results yield that the national health insurance has a strong positive impact on most of the maternal healthcare indicators. Public health insurance coverage increases the likelihood of receiving antenatal care by about 7%, delivering in a public health facility by 8%, and the likelihood that a newborn receive vitamin A dose after delivery by 8.2%. However, women who are less educated, from a poor household, and rural regions, are less likely to be covered by a health insurance. The findings of this study would guide intervention measures that aim at improving health care utilization especially among the poor and other vulnerable groups. |
| Keywords: | maternal care utilization,health insurance,propensity score matching,Egypt |
| JEL: | I14 I15 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:fsfmwp:223&r=ias |
| By: | Gina A. Livermore; Maura Bardos; Karen Katz |
| Abstract: | People with intellectual disability (ID) make up about 14 percent of all working-age Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) beneficiaries. |
| Keywords: | intellectual disability, SSI, Supplemental security income, SSDI, Social Security Disability Insurance, beneficiaries |
| JEL: | I J |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:2f51d63075084451a2f48ace57737bca&r=ias |
| By: | Kehoe, Patrick J. (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis); Pastorino, Elena (Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis) |
| Abstract: | Before the advent of sophisticated international financial markets, a widely accepted belief was that within a monetary union, a union-wide authority orchestrating fiscal transfers between countries is necessary to provide adequate insurance against country-specific economic fluctuations. A natural question is then: Do sophisticated international financial markets obviate the need for such an active union-wide authority? We argue that they do. Specifically, we show that in a benchmark economy with no international financial markets, an activist union-wide authority is necessary to achieve desirable outcomes. With sophisticated financial markets, however, such an authority is unnecessary if its only goal is to provide cross-country insurance. Since restricting the set of policy instruments available to member countries does not create a fiscal externality across them, this result holds in a wide variety of settings. Finally, we establish that an activist union-wide authority concerned just with providing insurance across member countries is optimal only when individual countries are either unable or unwilling to pursue desirable policies. |
| Keywords: | Cross-country externalities; Cross-country insurance; Cross-country transfers; Fiscal externalities; International financial markets; International transfers; Optimal currency area |
| JEL: | E60 E61 F33 F35 F38 F42 G15 G28 G33 |
| Date: | 2017–02–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedmsr:543&r=ias |
| By: | Aurélie Pierre (IRDES Institut de recherche et documentation en économie de la santé, Université Paris Descartes); Florence Jusot (Université Paris-Dauphine Leda-Legos) |
| Keywords: | Complementary Health Insurance, Inequality, Risk aversion, Time preference, National Interprofessional Agreement, Simulation. |
| JEL: | I13 D63 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irh:wpaper:dt67bis&r=ias |
| By: | Lorenzo Casaburi; Jack Willis |
| Abstract: | The gains from insurance arise from the transfer of income across states. Yet, by requiring that the premium be paid upfront, standard insurance products also transfer income across time. We show that this intertemporal transfer can help explain low insurance demand, especially among the poor, and in a randomized control trial in Kenya we test a crop insurance product which removes it. The product is interlinked with a contract farming scheme: as with other inputs, the buyer of the crop offers the insurance and deducts the premium from farmer revenues at harvest time. The take-up rate is 72%, compared to 5% for the standard upfront contract, and take-up is highest among poorer farmers. Additional experiments and outcomes indicate that liquidity constraints, present bias, and counterparty risk are all important constraints on the demand for standard insurance. Finally, evidence from a natural experiment in the United States, exploiting a change in the timing of the premium payment for Federal Crop Insurance, shows that the transfer across time also affects insurance adoption in developed countries. |
| Keywords: | Insurance, income transfer, development economics, contract farming |
| JEL: | D81 O13 O55 |
| Date: | 2016–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:uceswp:018&r=ias |
| By: | Stähler, Nikolai; Moyen, Stephane; Winkler, Fabian |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we discuss how cross-country unemployment insurance can be used to improve international risk sharing. We use a two-country business cycle model ugmented by a search labour market and incomplete financial markets and let the unemployment insurance scheme operate across both countries. We find that cross-country insurance through the unemployment insurance system can in principle be achieved without distorting national labour markets, and that international risk-sharing introduces a countercyclical element to the unemployment insurance tradeoff. When we calibrate our model to the Euro area, the optimal supranational policy makes replacement rates countercyclical, while they would be procyclical in the absence of cross-country transfers. Recent Eurozone policy proposals, by contrast, seem to have only limited effects. |
| JEL: | H20 J64 E62 |
| Date: | 2016 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:vfsc16:145612&r=ias |
| By: | Giulio Fella (Queen Mary, University of London, CFM and IFS); Seraín Frache (Banco Central del Uruguay, Departamento de Economia FCS-UDELAR); Winfried Koeniger (University of St.Gallen (Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research), CESifo, Center for Financial Studies and IZA) |
| Abstract: | We use the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth, a rather unique dataset with a long time dimension of panel information on consumption, income and wealth, to structurally estimate a buffer-stock saving model. We exploit the information contained in the joint dynamics of income, consumption and wealth to quantify the degree of insurance against income risk. The estimated model implies that Italian households can insure between 89 and 95 percent of a transitory and between 7 and 9 percent of a permanent income shock. Compared to existing empirical estimates for the same dataset, our findings suggest that Italian households do not have access to significant insurance beyond self-insurance |
| Keywords: | Consumption, Wealth, Incomplete markets, Insurance |
| JEL: | D91 E21 |
| Date: | 2016–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bku:doctra:2016001&r=ias |
| By: | Yaa Akosa Antwi; Johanna Catherine Maclean |
| Abstract: | In this study we re-visit the relationship between private health insurance mandates, access to employer-sponsored health insurance, and labor market outcomes. Specifically, we model employer-sponsored health insurance access and labor market outcomes across the lifecycle as a function of the number of high cost mandates in place at labor market entrance. Our analysis draws on a long panel of workers from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and exploits variation in five high cost state mandates between 1972 and 1989. Four principal findings emerge from our analysis. First, we find no strong evidence that high cost state health insurance mandates discourage employers from offering insurance to employees. Second, employers adjust both wages and labor demand to offset mandate costs, suggesting that employees place some value on the mandated benefits. Third, the effects are persistent, but not permanent. Fourth, the effects are heterogeneous across worker types. These findings have implications for thinking through the full labor market effects of health insurance expansions. |
| JEL: | H2 I13 J3 |
| Date: | 2017–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23203&r=ias |