Efforts to enroll low-income workers in premium assistance programs are constrained by the health insurance offer rates of the firms who employ them. One solution is to target premium subsidies to small firms as well as to their low-income workers, and Massachusetts is the sole state to have tried this. Firms participating in the state’s Insurance Partnership were more likely to be self-employe...

This paper studies how firms set contributions to employer-provided 401(k)-type pension plans. Using a reform that decreased the subsidy to contributions to capital pension accounts for Danish workers in the top income tax bracket, we provide strong evidence that employers' contributions are based on their employees' savings preferences. We find an immediate decrease in employer contributions t...

During the 1990s, growth in health care costs slowed considerably, helping to lessen the spending strain on business, government, and households. Although cost growth has slowed, the Federal Government continues to pay an ever-increasing share of the total health care bill. This article reviews important health care spending trends, and for the first time, provides separate estimates of the emp...

Court holds that warehouse employees who were not guaranteed fixed hours or schedules and could bid for regular jobs as they became available were not "casual employees" as defined by the collective bargaining agreement (CBA), and the employer thus was required to contribute to fund on their behalf Even if the employer treated the employees as casual employees, such practice could not contraven...

Who pays the healthcare costs associated with obesity? Among workers, this is largely a question of the incidence of the costs of employer-sponsored coverage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we find that the incremental healthcare costs associated with obesity are passed on to obese workers with employer-sponsored health insura...

This issue brief uses large employer experiences with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) to shed light on their potential as Medicare outpatient drug benefit administrators. PBM management techniques and typical employer approaches are discussed, as well as employer perspectives on PBM strengths and weaknesses and lessons learned. Considerations for Medicare policy are also examined. Information ...

This article examines, on the basis of longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, the effects of health and employer-provided pensions on retirement decisions, which have not been studied simultaneously in the Canadian context. The results indicate that employer-provided pensions have substantial and significant incentive effects on retirement behaviour. Having po...

This paper provides evidence that inefficient promotion strategies and large wage increases upon promotion may both arise as a consequence of asymmetric employer information. We present a simple model that illustrates how both phenomena may jointly arise due to the information revealing character of promotions. Using experimental labor markets, we demonstrate that asymmetric employer informatio...