Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Most studies have found a strong correlation between a country’s unemployment benefit generosity–in terms of either duration, wage replacement rate, or eligibility–and the unemployment rate. Many economists contend that one reason why Europeans have higher unemployment rates is due to their more generous unemployment benefit package. Yet a paper in Capitalism and Society by Howell,…
When constructing policy, we are often faced by an equity-efficiency tradeoff. For instance, increasing welfare benefits will increase equity but may reduce a poor individual’s incentive to work if the welfare benefits are tied to having low income. A recent NBER working paper by the nobel laureate James Heckman and co-author Dimitriy Masterov (“…Investing in…
America has been characterized as “the best poor man’s country.” In the nineteenth century land was cheap and available and farming provided relatively high living standards. During the twentieth century, however, change has come. By 1920, income equality had risen to all-time highs. Over the next century, income inequality and the returns to skill (i.e.:…
A few weeks ago I was able to attend Till von Wachter’s presentation on his working paper “Mortality, Mass-Layoffs, and Career Outcomes: An Analysis using Administrative Data,” co-written with Daniel Sullivan. The authors investigated whether or not losing one’s job affects mortality rates. There could be many reasons why losing one’s job may affect mortality.…
If taxation reduces the amount of hours worked, why does Scandinavia—which has some of the world’s highest tax rates—have labor force participation (LFP) rates similar to the U.S? This is the question addressed by Richard Rogerson in the NBER working paper âTaxation and market work: Is Scandinavia an outlier?â? The study looks at three…
Daniel Polsky and Sean Nicholson have two papers which aim to look at employer health insurance offerings. The first [Polsky, Nicholson (2004)] tries to estimate the factors driving the cost differences between HMO plans and non-HMO (eg: PPO, indemnity) plans. The authors deconstruct the cost differences into three factors: Utilization Effect: this occurs if individuals…
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 160 million Americans receive their health insurance from their employers. That figure represents three out of five non-elderly individuals. Many experts argue that using employer provided health insurance eliminates the problem of adverse selection by forming an insurance pool around a non-medical issue (employment). Jayanta Bahattacharya and William Vogt…
Recently, we have seen a shift towards the left in Latin America. Socialistic presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia (who just nationalized Bolivia’s national gas industry) and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela both enjoy much popular support. Brazilian president Lula Da Silva has a background as a union leader and Nestor Kirchner of Argentina also rose to…
Economists typically assume that the majority of additional costs employers incur from hiring a worker are reflected in a lower compensation package for the employee. For instance, employees owe payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare on 7.65% (Social Security taxes are limited to earnings below $94,000 in 2006, but Medicare taxes are applied on…
I have recently completed a paper titled Job Lock: A Literature Review, which has been posted in the ‘Papers by HC Economist‘ page. Here is a brief excerpt from the beginning of the paper. “Three in 10 Americans say they or someone in their household have at some time stayed in a job they wanted…