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on Insurance Economics |
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Issue of 2021‒06‒28
twenty-one papers chosen by Soumitra K. Mallick Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management |
| By: | Mark Duggan; Craig Garthwaite; Adelina Yanyue Wang |
| Abstract: | State governments face the classic “make or buy” decision for the provision of Medicaid services. Over the past two decades, the majority of states have outsourced the provision of social health insurance through Medicaid Managed Care (MMC) programs. These programs have been extensively studied in the literature – with little evidence of large positive or negative effects. However, most states initially allowed older and sicker enrollees to remain enrolled in the government run fee for service (FFS) programs. It is possible that these more fragile enrollees could have a different experience in managed care. In this paper we study California’s mandatory enrollment of the senior and persons with disabilities (SPD) population in MMC. We find this mandatory enrollment caused an increased use of the emergency department and transfers between hospitals. This was not simply a hassle cost for enrollees – we also estimate an increase in mortality for the affected population. These effects were strongest for the sickest enrollees – the types of enrollees that might be expected to have a different experience with managed care. Our results suggest the adverse impact of MMC varies by the enrollee health, which should inform the optimal outsourcing decision for governments. |
| JEL: | H0 H1 I1 I10 I13 I18 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28944&r= |
| By: | Manasi Deshpande; Lee Lockwood |
| Abstract: | The public debate over disability insurance has centered on concerns about individuals without severe health conditions receiving benefits. We go beyond health risk alone to quantify the overall insurance value of U.S. disability programs, including value from insuring non-health risk. We find that disability recipients, especially those with less-severe health conditions, are much more likely to have experienced a wide variety of non-health shocks than non-recipients. Selection into disability receipt on the basis of non-health shocks is so strong among individuals with less-severe health conditions that by many measures less-severe recipients are worse off than more-severe recipients. As a result, under baseline assumptions, benefits to less-severe recipients have an annual surplus value (insurance benefit less efficiency cost) over cost-equivalent tax cuts of $7,700 per recipient, about three-fourths that of benefits to more-severe recipients ($9,900). Insurance against non-health risk accounts for about one-half of the value of U.S. disability programs. |
| JEL: | H5 I3 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28852&r= |
| By: | Sandrine Spaeter |
| Abstract: | In the face of major risks, the financial capacities of private insurers are rapidly reached. Reinsurance is used to ensure an acceptable (and also imposed by regulation) solvency ratio. Yet standard reinsurance can also be unable to provide an adequate level of compensation. For major risks such as natural catastrophes, a risk transfer can be operated to the financial markets through securitization. The today well-known cat bonds, cat options, or swaps permit the issuer (a state prone to earthquakes, an insurer exposed to different major risks) to win on the financial market while loosing on the physical one following a cat. A pandemic is a cat. Unfortunately a nat cat risk management strategy based on securitization cannot be identically replicated for a pandemic cat. In this paper, we discuss the main differences between nat cats (also technological disasters) and pandemic catastrophes in terms of the economic losses. Risk correlation, basis risk, moral hazard, failure of world mutualization are mainly at stake. Then we propose a coverage strategy of the pandemic business interruption risk that combines self-insurance, insurance contracts, double triggered pandemic bonds and contingent public debt, each tool being mobilized with regard to their opportunity, transaction and management costs. We also discuss the outline of an adequate hybrid risk management governance by answering the question ’Who shall issue what?’. |
| Keywords: | pandemic risk, operational losses, (re)insurance, securitization, corporate risk management. |
| JEL: | G11 Q54 G22 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2021-18&r= |
| By: | H. Xavier Jara; Agathe Simon |
| Abstract: | This paper evaluates the potential of a common unemployment insurance system for the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU-UI) to improve income protection of atypical workers, namely those in part-time and temporary contracts. We use EUROMOD, the European tax-benefit microsimulation model, to simulate entitlements to national and EMU-UI and assess their effects on the household disposable income of atypical workers in the event of unemployment. Our results show that there are sizable gaps in the coverage of national UI schemes between countries, with atypical workers having particularly low coverage rates. The introduction of an EMU-UI would reduce coverage gaps and increase net replacement rates, especially for atypical workers, and would protect a large share of the workforce against the risk of poverty. Extending eligibility for the EMU-UI to the self-employed would further improve income protection, reducing their risk of falling into poverty in the event of unemployment. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment insurance, European Monetary Union, microsimulation, income protection, atypical work. |
| JEL: | C81 H55 I38 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2021-16&r= |
| By: | Cabrales, Antonio; Clots-Figueras, Irma; Hernán-González, Roberto; Kujal, Praveen |
| Abstract: | Formal or informal institutions have long been adopted by societies to protect against opportunistic behavior. However, we know very little about how these institutions are chosen and their impact on behavior. We experimentally investigate the demand for different levels of institutions that provide low to high levels of insurance and its subsequent impact on prosocial behavior. We conduct a large-scale online experiment where we add the possibility of purchasing insurance to safeguard against low reciprocity to the standard trust game. We compare two different mechanisms, the private (purchase) and the social (voting) choice of institutions. Whether voted or purchased, we find that there is demand for institutions in low trustworthiness groups, while high trustworthiness groups always demand lower levels of institutions. Lower levels of institutions are demanded when those who can benefit from opportunistic behavior, i.e. low trustworthiness individuals, can also vote for them. Importantly, the presence of insurance crowds out civic spirit even when subjects can choose the no insurance option: trustworthiness when formal institutions are available is lower than in their absence. |
| Keywords: | institutions; Insurance; Trust; trustworthiness; voting |
| JEL: | C92 D02 D64 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14807&r= |
| By: | Kartik Sethi; Siddhartha P. Chakrabarty |
| Abstract: | We undertake an empirical analysis for the premium data of non-life insurance companies operating in India, in the paradigm of fitting the data for the parametric distribution of Lognormal and the extreme value based distributions of Generalized Extreme Value and Generalized Pareto. The best fit to the data for ten companies considered, is obtained for the Generalized Extreme Value distribution. |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2106.02446&r= |
| By: | G.C. Britto, Diogo; Pinotti, Paolo; Sampaio, Breno |
| Abstract: | We investigate the effect of job loss and unemployment benefits on criminal behavior, exploiting individual-level data on the universe of workers and criminal cases in Brazil over the 2009-2017 period. We match workers displaced upon plausibly exogenous mass layoffs with observationally-equivalent control groups to identify dynamic treatment effects of job loss while allowing for treatment effect heterogeneity. In our preferred specification, the probability of criminal prosecution increases by 23% upon job loss and remains approximately constant during the following years. Our unusually large dataset allows us to precisely estimate increases in almost all types of crimes -- including offenses with no economic motivation -- as well as spillover effects on other household members. The estimated effects remain robust when restricting to arrests ``in flagrante", which are less subject to differential reporting by employment status. We then evaluate the mitigating effect of unemployment benefits leveraging on discontinuous changes in eligibility. Regression discontinuity estimates suggest that unemployment benefits covering 3 to 5 months after displacement completely offset potential crime increases upon job loss, especially for liquidity-constrained individuals, although this effect completely vanishes upon benefit expiration. Our findings point at liquidity constraints and psychological stress as main drivers of criminal behavior upon job loss, while substitution between time on the job and leisure does not seem to play an important role. |
| Keywords: | crime; Registry Data; unemployment; Unemployment insurance |
| JEL: | J63 J65 K42 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14789&r= |
| By: | Hélène Benghalem (Université de Lausanne (UNIL)); Pierre Cahuc (Département d'économie); Pierre Villedieu (Département d'économie) |
| Abstract: | We ran a large randomized controlled experiment among about 150,000 recipients of unemployment benefits insurance in France in order to evaluate the impact of part-time unemployment benefits. We took advantage of the lack of knowledge of job seekers regarding this program and sent emails presenting the program. The information provision had a significant positive impact on the propensity to work while on claim, but reduced the unemployment exit rate, showing important lock-in effects into unemployment associated with part-time unemployment benefits. The importance of these lock-in effects implies that increasing the marginal tax rate on earnings from work while on claim in the neighborhood of its current level would not decrease labor supply and would decrease the expenditure net of taxes of the unemployment insurance agency. |
| Keywords: | Unemployment insurance; Part-time unemployment benefits; Lock-in effects; Unemployment duration |
| JEL: | H5 J64 J65 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3eqvfrusqi97g9fr9cuc7t5gkd&r= |
| By: | Daniel Aaronson; Scott A. Brave; R. Andrew Butters; Daniel Sacks; Boyoung Seo |
| Abstract: | We leverage an event-study research design focused on the seven costliest hurricanes to hit the US mainland since 2004 to identify the elasticity of unemployment insurance filings with respect to search intensity. Applying our elasticity estimate to the state-level Google Trends indexes for the topic “unemployment,” we show that out-of-sample forecasts made ahead of the official data releases for March 21 and 28 predicted to a large degree the extent of the Covid-19 related surge in the demand for unemployment insurance. In addition, we provide a robust assessment of the uncertainty surrounding these estimates and demonstrate their use within a broader forecasting framework for US economic activity. |
| Keywords: | unemployment insurance; Google Trends; hurricanes; search; unemployment; Covid-19 1 The |
| JEL: | C53 H12 J65 |
| Date: | 2020–04–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedhwp:92754&r= |
| By: | Ranasinghe, Ashantha (University of Alberta, Department of Economics); Su, Xuejuan (University of Alberta, Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We develop a mixed duopoly model with quality-differentiated products. The public firm chooses its product quality and offers it for free to eligible individuals as a form of social assistance to maximize consumer welfare, while the private firm chooses both the product quality and price to maximize profit. We first characterize the pattern of market segmentation for given product offerings, highlighting the non-monotonic relationship between market participation and individual income. We then calibrate the model to health insurance for the U.S. working-age population, with Medicaid acting as the public firm. We examine the distributional implications of policy changes, both actual and hypothetical, that lead to various degrees of public program expansion. Despite potentially significant inefficiency of the public firm, the overall effect of its expansion is welfare improving. Central to these findings is the significant market power enjoyed by the private firm that results in high profit margins if left unchecked. As more individuals become eligible for the public program, the resulting increase in competitive pressure disciplines the private firm’s ability to exercise market power. |
| Keywords: | mixed duopoly; quality differentiation; public provision of private goods; funding of public services; distribution |
| JEL: | D21 D43 H11 H42 H44 I00 L38 |
| Date: | 2021–06–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ris:albaec:2021_001&r= |
| By: | Ferraro, Domenico; Jaimovich, Nir; Molinari, Francesca; Young, Cristobal |
| Abstract: | We develop a search-and-matching model where the magnitude of unemployment insurance benefits affects the likelihood that unemployed actually engage in active job search. To quan- titively discipline this relation we use administrative data of unemployed search audits. We use the model to quantify the effects of unemployment reforms. For small benefits' increases, the policymaker faces a trade-off between an uptick in the measure of unemployed actually searching and a fall in the unemployment exit-rate conditional on searching. For larger bene- fits' increases, an active search margin magnifies the benefits' disincentives, leading to a bigger drop in the employment rate than previously thought. |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14786&r= |
| By: | Margaris, Panagiotis; Wallenius, Johanna |
| Abstract: | In this paper we develop and estimate a life cycle model that features pecuniary and non-pecuniary investments in health, along with a cognitive ability gradient associated with said investments, in order to rationalize the socioeconomic gradients in health and life expectancy in the United States. Agents accumulate health capital, which affects the level of utility, labor productivity, the distribution of medical spending shocks and life expectancy. We find that the cognitive ability gradient to health investments and the differences in lifetime income account for the lion's share of the observed life expectancy gap. Providing universal health insurance coverage has heterogeneous effects, depending on the progressivity of the financing mechanism, and at best results in a modest decrease in the life expectancy gap. |
| Keywords: | health; inequality; Life Cycle; time use |
| JEL: | D31 E21 I14 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:14796&r= |
| By: | David Gray (uOttawa - University of Ottawa [Ottawa], TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel); Yannick l'Horty (Université Gustave Eiffel, TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel); Souleymane Mbaye (Université Gustave Eiffel, ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel, TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée); Pascale Petit (Université Gustave Eiffel, ERUDITE - Equipe de Recherche sur l’Utilisation des Données Individuelles en lien avec la Théorie Economique - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12 - Université Gustave Eiffel, TEPP - Travail, Emploi et Politiques Publiques - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée) |
| Abstract: | We carry out seven distinct and independent rounds of correspondence tests to detect discriminatory behaviour in domains that heretofore have not been subjected to much investigation in the literature: purchasing a used car, purchasing an auto insurance policy, applying for a car loan, purchasing complementary health insurance, enrolling in an adult training program, purchasing an existing small business, and renting vacation accommodations. We seek to discern evidence of discriminatory behaviour according to the criteria of age, gender, ethnic origin, and the locality of residence. |
| Keywords: | Discrimination,correspondence testing,age,ethnic origin,gender,neighborhood of residence |
| Date: | 2021–05–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03243473&r= |
| By: | Ari Bronsoler; Jonathan Gruber; Enrique Seira |
| Abstract: | There are ongoing debates around the world over the value of private supplements to public health insurance systems. We investigate this issue in the context of one of the world’s deadliest diseases, diabetes, and one of the countries with the worst diabetes problems in the world, Mexico. We implement a novel deniers randomization approach to cost-effectively provide a causal estimate of enrollment in private supplement to the free public health system. Our final sample of more than 1000 diabetics randomized into a large price subsidy for enrollment in the private plan is well balanced. We estimate enormous impacts of the private supplement, with HbA1c blood sugar levels falling by a full point (relative to a control mean of 8.5%), and to increase the share of those treated who are under control by 69%. We show that this effect arises through both improved treatment compliance and health behaviors, and that diabetes complications fall even in the short run. The net costs of this intervention are at most one-third of the gross costs due to offsetting public sector savings, and the health benefits are many multiples of gross costs. But the returns to private care do not appear to reflect more productive delivery of care per visit, which is comparable in a separate quasi-experimental analysis of public insurance; rather, effects arise through more attachment to medical care in the private alternative. |
| JEL: | H11 H51 I11 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28913&r= |
| By: | Ying Jiao (SAF - Laboratoire de Sciences Actuarielle et Financière - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon); Yahia Salhi (SAF - Laboratoire de Sciences Actuarielle et Financière - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon); Shihua Wang |
| Abstract: | The dependence structure of the life statuses plays an important role in the valuation of life insurance products involving multiple lives. Although the mortality of individuals is well studied in the literature, their dependence remains a challenging field. In this paper, the main objective is to introduce a new approach for analyzing the mortality dependence between two individuals in a couple. It is intended to describe in a dynamic framework the joint mortality of married couples in terms of marginal mortality rates. The proposed framework is general and aims to capture, by adjusting some parametric form, the desired effect such as the "broken-heart syndrome". To this end, we use a well-suited multiplicative decomposition, which will serve as a building block for the framework and thus will be used to separate the dependence structure from the marginals. We make the link with the existing practice of affine mortality models. Finally, given that the framework is general, we propose some illustrative examples and show how the underlying model captures the main stylized facts of bivariate mortality dynamics. |
| Keywords: | Bivariate Mortality,Dependence,Conditional Survival Probability,Copula,Broken-Heart Syndrome |
| Date: | 2021–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-03244324&r= |
| By: | Mark Duggan; Irena Dushi; Sookyo Jeong; Gina Li |
| Abstract: | The delayed retirement credit (DRC) increases monthly OASI (Old Age and Survivors Insurance) benefits for primary beneficiaries who claim after their full retirement age (FRA). For many years, the DRC was set at 3.0 percent per year (0.25 percent monthly). The 1983 amendments to Social Security more than doubled this actuarial adjustment to 8.0 percent per year. These changes were phased in gradually, so that those born in 1924 or earlier retained a 3.0 percent DRC while those born in 1943 or later had an 8.0 percent DRC. In this paper, we use administrative data from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to estimate the effect of this policy change on individual claiming behavior. We focus on the first half of the DRC increase (from 3.0 to 5.5 percent) given changes in other SSA policies that coincided with the later increases. Our findings demonstrate that the increase in the DRC led to a significant increase in delayed claiming of social security benefits and strongly suggest that the effects were larger for those with higher lifetime incomes, who would have a greater financial incentive to delay given their longer life expectancies. |
| JEL: | H55 |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28919&r= |
| By: | Haizhen Lin; Ian M. McCarthy; Michael R. Richards |
| Abstract: | The organizational structure of U.S. health care has changed dramatically in recent years, with nearly half of physicians now employed by hospitals. This trend toward increasing vertical alignment between physicians and hospitals may alter physician behavior relative to physicians remaining in independent or group practices. We examine the effects of such vertical alignment using an instrumental variable strategy and a clinical context facilitating well-defined episodes of care. We find relatively modest positive effects (point estimates of 7% or lower) on total Medicare payments per episode, characterized by an increase in billable activity among other integrated physicians alongside a large decrease in activity among non-integrated providers. Acquiring hospitals ultimately capture more revenue following a physician practice acquisition; yet, the smaller overall bundle of care generates no net savings to Medicare due to location-based payment rules favorable to hospitals. |
| JEL: | H51 I11 I18 |
| Date: | 2021–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:28859&r= |
| By: | Runhuan Feng; Peng Li |
| Abstract: | Nested stochastic modeling has been on the rise in many fields of the financial industry. Such modeling arises whenever certain components of a stochastic model are stochastically determined by other models. There are at least two main areas of applications, including (1) portfolio risk management in the banking sector and (2) principle-based reserving and capital requirements in the insurance sector. As financial instrument values often change with economic fundamentals, the risk management of a portfolio (outer loop) often requires the assessment of financial positions subject to changes in risk factors in the immediate future. The valuation of financial position (inner loop) is based on projections of cashflows and risk factors into the distant future. The nesting of such stochastic modeling can be computationally challenging. Most of existing techniques to speed up nested simulations are based on curve fitting. The main idea is to establish a functional relationship between inner loop estimator and risk factors by running a limited set of economic scenarios, and, instead of running inner loop simulations, inner loop estimations are made by feeding other scenarios into the fitted curve. This paper presents a non-conventional approach based on the concept of sample recycling. Its essence is to run inner loop estimation for a small set of outer loop scenarios and to find inner loop estimates under other outer loop scenarios by recycling those known inner loop paths. This new approach can be much more efficient when traditional techniques are difficult to implement in practice. |
| Date: | 2021–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2106.06028&r= |
| By: | Ma, Yuanyuan; Nolan, Anne; Smith, James |
| Date: | 2020 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esr:wpaper:rb202022&r= |
| By: | Juranek, Steffen (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics); Otneim, Håkon (Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | We use machine learning methods to predict which patents end up at court using the population of US patents granted between 2002 and 2005. We analyze the role of the different dimensions of an empirical analysis for the performance of the prediction - the number of observations, the number of patent characteristics and the model choice. We find that the extending the set of patent characteristics has the biggest impact on the prediction performance. Small samples have not only a low predictive performance, their predictions are also particularly unstable. However, only samples of intermediate size are required for reasonably stable performance. The model choice matters, too, more sophisticated machine learning methods can provide additional value to a simple logistic regression. Our results provide practical advice to everyone building patent litigation models, e.g., for litigation insurance or patent management in more general. |
| Keywords: | Patents; litigation; prediction; machine learning |
| JEL: | K00 K41 O34 |
| Date: | 2021–06–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2021_006&r= |
| By: | International Monetary Fund |
| Abstract: | At the request of the Central Bank of Uruguay (BCU), and with the support of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) Western Hemisphere Department (WHD), a monetary and financial statistics (MFS) technical assistance (TA) mission from the IMF’s Statistics Department (STA) visited Montevideo during February 3-14, 2020. The main objectives of the mission were to: (i) review available source data for other financial corporations (OFC); in particular, insurance corporations (IC), pension funds (PF), and credit administration companies (CAC); and (ii) compile standardized monetary statistics for OFC (report form SRF 4SR) in line with the 2016 Monetary and Financial Statistics Manual and Compilation Guide (MFSMCG). The officials met during the mission are listed in Appendix I. |
| Keywords: | IMF's Statistics Department; administration company; staff team of the International Monetary Fund; Statistics Department of the IMF; CAC assets; Nonbank financial institutions; Offshore financial centers; Financial statements; Financial soundness indicators; Collective action clauses; Global |
| Date: | 2021–04–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:imf:imfscr:2021/080&r= |