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on Insurance Economics |
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Issue of 2019‒04‒22
ten papers chosen by Soumitra K. Mallick Indian Institute of Social Welfare and Business Management |
| By: | Rasmus Hundsbaek Pedersen; Thabit Jacob |
| Abstract: | This paper analyses the introduction and expansion of health insurance schemes in Tanzania. Health insurances were introduced around year 2000 as part of a more general health reform process aimed at improving access to health services. The paper argues that the health insurances were driven by a policy coalition of bureaucrats and transnational actors, who, inspired by international trends, framed reforms as a way for the ruling party to live up to one of its core priorities since independence, namely, improved and, eventually, universal access to health services. The introduction of insurances was expected to help mobilise funds and improve the working of the health care system for this purpose. However, judged by their modest design and slow implementation, the ruling political elite remained ambiguous about health insurances. Politically, a fast rollout was perceived to be risky. Similar political considerations may explain the reluctance to expand health insurance coverage through a mandatory scheme that bureaucrats and development partners have propagated recently. The rejection of the initial design for such a scheme came as a surprise to the policy coalition, which did not enjoy the same access to key decisionmakers as in the past. Concurrently, and driven by increased electoral competition, the ruling party has increasingly focused on improving access through the expansion of physical health infrastructure. This has the additional advantage of being highly visible among the rural majority of the population, who overwhelmingly vote Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM). This is our second paper on social protection in Tanzania. |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bwp:bwppap:esid-110-18&r=all |
| By: | Mohammed Elhaj Mustafa (University of Kassala); Ebaidalla Mahjoub Ebaidalla |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the factors that influence the participation of the informal workers in health insurance program in two Sudanese states, namely, Kassala and Khartoum. To this end, the study relies on primary data collected from 742 informal workers in these two states. Both qualitative and quantitative techniques have beenadopted to carry out the intended investigation. The analysis indicates that factors such as respondent’ age, wealth status, chronic disease status, morbidity, health insurance awareness, health-seeking behavior and proximity to health care facilities arethe most significant factors affecting informal workers’ engagement in health insurance system. The result also reveals that being residing in urban areas lowers the probability of joining health insurance membership in the full, Kassala and Khartoum samples. Both monetary income and average years of schooling are found to contribute positively in raising the likelihood of voluntary enrollment in health insurance. These findings still hold under different robustness checks, confirming the existence of barriers that prevent a huge portion of the informal workers from voluntary enrollment in health insurance. Finally, the paper ends with some recommendations aimedat enhancing the role of NHIF in accommodating the informal workers and achieving universal health coverage. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:erg:wpaper:1300&r=all |
| By: | François Gerard; Joana Naritomi |
| Abstract: | The most common forms of government-mandated job displacement insurance are Severance Pay (SP; lump-sum payments at layoff) and Unemployment Insurance (UI; periodic payments contingent on nonemployment). While there is a vast literature on UI, SP programs have received much less attention, even though they are prevalent across countries and predominant in developing countries. In particular, little is known about their insurance value, which critically relies on workers’ ability to dissave the lump-sum progressively to smooth consumption after layoff. Using de-identified high-frequency expenditure data and matched employee-employer data from Brazil, we find that displaced workers eligible for both UI and SP increase consumption at layoff by 35% despite experiencing a 17% consumption loss after they stop receiving any benefits. Moreover, this sensitivity of consumer spending to cash-on-hand is present across spending categories and sources of variation in UI benefits and SP amounts. We show that a simple structural model with present-biased workers can rationalize our findings, and we use it to illustrate their implications for the incentive-insurance trade-off between SP and UI. Specifically, the insurance value of SP programs – or of other policies that provide liquidity to workers at layoff – can be severely reduced when consumption is over-sensitive to the timing of benefit disbursement, undermining their advantage in terms of job-search incentives. Our findings highlight the importance of the difference between SP and UI in their disbursement policy, and shed new light on the need for job displacement insurance in a developing country context. |
| JEL: | G22 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:25749&r=all |
| By: | Gerard, Francois; Naritomi, Joana |
| Abstract: | The most common forms of government-mandated job displacement insurance are Severance Pay (SP; lump-sum payments at layoff) and Unemployment Insurance (UI; periodic payments contingent on non-employment). While there is a vast literature on UI, SP programs have received much less attention, even though they are prevalent across countries and predominant in developing countries. In particular, little is known about their insurance value, which critically relies on workers' ability to dissave the lump-sum progressively to smooth consumption after layoff. Using de-identified high-frequency expenditure data and matched employee-employer data from Brazil, we find that displaced workers eligible for both UI and SP increase consumption at layoff by 35% despite experiencing a 17% consumption loss after they stop receiving any benefits. Moreover, this sensitivity of consumer spending to cash-on-hand is present across spending categories and sources of variation in UI benefits and SP amounts. We show that a simple structural model with present-biased workers can rationalize our findings, and we use it to illustrate their implications for the incentive-insurance trade-off between SP and UI. Specifically, the insurance value of SP programs - or of other policies that provide liquidity to workers at layoff - can be severely reduced when consumption is over-sensitive to the timing of benefit disbursement, undermining their advantage in terms of job-search incentives. Our findings highlight the importance of the difference between SP and UI in their disbursement policy, and shed new light on the need for job displacement insurance in a developing country context. |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13676&r=all |
| By: | Lipton, Brandy |
| Abstract: | Low-income children are less likely to receive recommended health services than their high-income counterparts. This paper examines whether the design of parental Medicaid benefit packages could serve as a mechanism for reducing income-based disparities in unmet health care needs, considering dental benefits as a case study. Leveraging state-level changes to adult dental benefits over time, I find that coverage is associated with increases of 14 and 5 percentage points, respectively, in the likelihood of a recent dental visit among parents and children directly exposed to the policy. Child effects appear to be concentrated among younger children under age 12. |
| Keywords: | Medicaid, health behavior, disparities, oral health |
| JEL: | D1 I12 I13 I14 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:93248&r=all |
| By: | David C. Stapleton; Frank H. Martin |
| Abstract: | This study describes the extent to which vocational rehabilitation (VR) applicants receive Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits before or after VR application. |
| Keywords: | Social Security disability, disability insurance, Old Age, Survivors, Disability Insurance, OASDI, Rehabilitation Services Administration, RSA, SSDI, workers, disabled adult children, disabled beneficiaries |
| JEL: | I J |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpr:mprres:817acf599fbf4bc0b03cda30a9440052&r=all |
| By: | Quarles, Randal K. (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.)) |
| Date: | 2019–01–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedgsq:1030&r=all |
| By: | Victor Champonnois (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Olivier Chanel (GREQAM - Groupement de Recherche en Économie Quantitative d'Aix-Marseille - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales, AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - Ecole Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Khaled Makhloufi (SESSTIM - U1252 INSERM - Aix Marseille Univ - UMR 259 IRD - Sciences Economiques et Sociales de la Santé & Traitement de l'Information Médicale - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - INSERM - Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) |
| Abstract: | The elicitation format is a crucial aspect of Contingent Valuation (CV) surveys and can impact their reliability. This paper contributes to the extensive debate on WTP (Willingness To Pay) elicitation formats by assessing whether the Circular Payment Card (CPC) can reduce anchoring on respondents' previous answers under multiple elicitation questions. This new format uses a visual pie-chart representation without start or end points: respondents spin the circular card in any direction until they find the section that best matches their WTP. We used a CV survey based on two ways of reducing risks associated with flooding, each randomly presented first to half of the respondents, to test the absolute performance of CPC. We presented a second survey on two social insurance schemes for subjects currently uninsured to respondents randomly split into three subgroups. Each group's WTP was elicited using one of three formats: Open-Ended (OE), standard Payment Card (PC) and the new CPC. The two insurance schemes were always proposed in the same order, and we assessed the relative performance of CPC by comparing anchoring across respondents. Our results provide evidence that CPC is likely to reduce anchoring in multiple elicitation questions and that respondents may rely on different heuristic decisions when giving WTP in the OE and in the two PC formats. |
| Keywords: | Willingness to pay,Elicitation format,Payment card,Circular payment card,Social insurance,Flood |
| Date: | 2018–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01890243&r=all |
| By: | Adriana Castelli (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK); Martin Chalkley (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK); James Gaughan (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK); Maria Lucia Pace (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK); Idaira Rodriguez Santana (Centre for Health Economics, University of York, UK) |
| Abstract: | This report updates the Centre for Health Economics’ time-series of National Health Service (NHS)productivity growth for the period 2015/16 to 2016/17 and reports trends in output, input and productivity since 2004/05. NHS productivity growth is measured by comparing the growth in outputs produced by the NHS to the growth in inputs used to produce them. NHS outputs include all the activities undertaken for NHS patients wherever they are treated in England, and also accounts for changes in the quality of care provided to those patients. NHS inputs include the number of doctors, nurses and support staff providing care, the equipment and clinical supplies used, and the facilities of hospitals and other premises where care is provided. |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:chy:respap:163cherp&r=all |
| By: | Marco Rogna (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management, Italy); Günter Schamel (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management, Italy); Alex Weissensteiner (Free University of Bolzano‐Bozen, Faculty of Economics and Management, Italy) |
| Abstract: | There is a growing interest in analysing the diffusion of agricultural insurance, seen as an effective tool for managing farm risks. Much atten- tion has been dedicated to understanding the scarce adoption rate despite high levels of subsidization and policy support. In this paper, we analyse an aspect that seems to have been partially overlooked: the potential competing nature between insurance and other risk management tools. We consider hail as a single source weather shock and analyse the potential competing effect of anti-hail nets over insurance as instruments to cope with this shock by presenting a simple theoretical model that is rooted into expected utility theory. After describing the basic model, we perform some comparative static analysis to identify the role of individual elements that are shaping farmers' decisions. From this exercise it results that the worth of anti-hail nets compared to insurance is an increasing function of the overall risk of hail damages, of the farmers' level of risk aversion and of the worth of the agricultural output. Finally, we develop a simulation model using data related to apple production in South Tyrol, a Northern-Italian province with a relatively high risk of hail. The model generally confirms the results of the comparative static analysis and it shows that, in this region, anti-hail nets are often superior than insurance in expected utility terms. |
| Keywords: | Actuarial soundness, Agricultural insurance markets, Antihail nets, Hail, Expected utility |
| JEL: | Q12 Q18 |
| Date: | 2019–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bzn:wpaper:bemps62&r=all |