Most systems of health care financing in EU member states currently include elements of income redistribution. The paper analyzes the effects of shifting this kind of redistribution to the tax system and argues that this reform could create two types of efficiency gains. On the expenditure side, it would facilitate the adoption of more incentive-compatible insurance contracts, for example throu...

We study whether and how peer referrals increase screening, testing, identification of patients with tuberculosis, an infectious disease responsible for over one million deaths annually. In experiment 3,176 at 122 tuberculosis treatment centers in India, we find that small financial incentives raise the probability existing refer prospective screening resulting cost-effective new cases. Incenti...

Housing is mostly exempted from Medicaid and Supplemental Social Insurance means tests. Reforms of this special treatment have been debated, but little known about its costs, benefits, redistributive implications. I estimate a life cycle model single retirees accounting for exemption. It shows that the homestead exemption explains important patterns recipiency it highly valued. also estate reco...

We study targeted lockdowns in a multigroup SIR model where infection, hospitalization, and fatality rates vary between groups—in particular the “young,” “middle-aged,” “old.” Our enables tractable quantitative analysis of optimal policy. For baseline parameter values for COVID-19 pandemic applied to US, we find that policies differentially targeting risk/age groups significantly outperform uni...

We study optimal dynamic lockdowns against COVID-19 within a commuting network. Our framework integrates canonical spatial epidemiology and trade models is applied to cities with varying initial viral spread: Seoul, Daegu, the New York City metropolitan area (NYM). Spatial achieve substantially smaller income losses than uniform lockdowns. In NYM Daegu—with large shocks—the lockdown restricts i...

Participants in means-tested programs must periodically document eligibility through a recertification process. If all cases that fail are ineligible, the exact timing of this process should be irrelevant. We find later interview assignments for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which leave less time to reschedule missed interviews, decrease success by 22 percent. The consequenc...

This paper provides fi eld evidence on (a) how price framing aff ects consumers’ decision to switch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurance can be infl uenced by policymakers through simple regulatory eff orts. In 2009, in order to foster competition among health insurance companies, German federal regulation required health insurance companies to ...

This article aims at investigating the interplay between environmental quality, health and development. We consider an OLG model, where human capital dynamics depend on the current environment, through its impact on children’s school attendance. In turn, environmental quality dynamics depend on human capital, through maintenance and pollution. This two-way causality generates a co-evolution of ...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefi ts in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary benefi t provision on top of federally mandated benefi ts, and (iii) health plan prices for almost all Ger...