Pricing institutions and the welfare cost of adverse selection
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Published version
Author(s)
Weyl, E Glen
Veiga, André
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
To mitigate adverse selection in insurance markets, individuals are often mandated to buy at least a baseline plan, but may choose to opt into a premium plan. In some markets, such as US health exchanges, each plan is responsible for the full expenses of those who buy it ("total pricing"). In other markets, such as the privately supplied "Medigap" top-ups to traditional government-provided Medicare, premium providers are only responsible for the incremental expenses they top up ("incremental pricing"). For parameter values calibrated to health exchanges, the shift from total to incremental pricing reduces the welfare loss from adverse selection by an order of magnitude.
Date Issued
2017-05-01
Date Acceptance
2017-05-01
Citation
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2017, 9 (2), pp.139-148
ISSN
1945-7669
Start Page
139
End Page
148
Journal / Book Title
American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
Volume
9
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2017 by the American Economic Association. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of American Economic Association publications for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not distributed for profit or direct commercial advantage and that copies show this notice on the first page or initial screen of a display along with the full citation, including the name of the author. Weyl, E. Glen, and André Veiga. 2017. "Pricing Institutions and the Welfare Cost of Adverse Selection." American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 9 (2): 139-48. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than AEA must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted.
Subjects
14 Economics
Publication Status
Published