Search Results
Working Paper
Our money or your life : indemnities vs. deductibles in health insurance
When the value of a medical treatment differs across individuals, it may be socially beneficial to treat some, but not all, patients. If individuals are ignorant of their health status ex ante, they should be willing to purchase insurance fully covering treatments for high-benefit patients (Hs) and denying treatment for low-benefit patients (Ls). But if prognoses are observable but not verifiable, insurers may have trouble denying care to Ls. Deductibles force Ls to reveal their status by imposing a marginal cost on treatment, but at a price of incomplete risk-sharing. Lump-sum indemnities ...
Journal Article
State revenues fall short: problems may be long-term
Working Paper
Getting better, feeling worse : cure rates, health insurance, and welfare
We model a health insurance market where rising cure rates for a disease may paradoxically diminish welfare and even negate the desirability of health insurance altogether. In the model, rising cure rates can affect welfare in two ways: (1) directly, by improving some individuals' health, and (2) indirectly, by influencing the mode and parameters of the optimal insurance contract and, thus, ex post financial wealth distribution. (?Mode? refers to the qualitative specifications of the contract?presence or absence of indemnities and full, partial or zero coverage of treatments received. ...
Journal Article
Fifth District economic developments in 1992
Journal Article
Derivatives made E-Z
Behind this controversy is a new class of financial instruments known as derivatives.
Journal Article
Security (not guns) and butter
Journal Article
Medical care prices indexes
Working Paper
Medicine worse than the malady : cure rates, population shifts, and health insurance
We examine the welfare effects of the interaction of three types of technological progress in medicine and health insurance; some paradoxes emerge. The model specifies three types of people: W (well); H (sick with high cure rate if treated); and L (sick with low cure rate if treated). There are four insurance modes: Indemnity (I): fully covered treatments for Hs, cash bribes for Ls to forgo treatment); Deductible (D): partially covered treatments for Hs, no treatments for Ls); Zero (Z): no insurance and no treatments); and Full (F): fully covered treatments for Hs and Ls). The three types of ...
Journal Article
Health care: rising costs and public policy
Working Paper
Wicksell's monetary framework and dynamic stability
Traditionally, central banks seeking to stabilize general prices have followed policies similar to those advocated by Knut Wicksell: when prices are higher that desired, raise interest rates to exert downward pressure on prices, and conversely. Despite the historical predominance of interest rate-based monetary policies, analysts frequently focus on how prices are affected by control of the money stock (or its high-powered base). In those cases where they do examine the relationship between interest rates and prices, they mostly do so in a Keynesian framework rather than a Wicksellian one. ...