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作者:Einav, Liran; Finkelstein, Amy; Polyakova, Maria
作者单位:Stanford University; National Bureau of Economic Research; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Stanford University
摘要:We explore how private drug plans set cost sharing in the context of Medicare Part D. While publicly provided drug coverage typically involves uniform cost sharing across drugs, we document substantial heterogeneity in the cost sharing for different drugs within privately provided plans. We also document that private plans systematically set higher consumer cost sharing for drugs or classes associated with more elastic demand; to do so, we estimate price elasticities of demand across more than...
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作者:Grigolon, Laura; Reynaert, Mathias; Verboven, Frank
作者单位:McMaster University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Toulouse School of Economics; KU Leuven; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK
摘要:To what extent do car buyers undervalue future fuel costs, and what does this imply for tax policy? To address both questions, we show it is crucial to account for consumer mileage heterogeneity. We use product-level data for a panel of European countries and exploit fuel cost variation by engine. Despite a modest undervaluation of fuel costs, fuel taxes are more effective in reducing fuel usage than product taxes. They also perform better in terms of welfare, even when usage demand is held fi...
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作者:Murphy, Alvin
作者单位:Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
摘要:This paper estimates a dynamic microeconometric model of housing supply. The model features forward-looking landowners who optimally choose both the timing and the nature of construction while taking into account expectations about future prices and costs. The model is estimated using a unique dataset describing individual landowners in the San Francisco Bay Area. Results indicate that geographic and time-series variation in costs are key to understanding where and when construction occurs. Pr...
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作者:Drupp, Moritz A.; Freeman, Mark C.; Groom, Ben; Nesje, Frikk
作者单位:University of Hamburg; University of Kiel; University of York - UK; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; University of Oslo
摘要:The economic values of investing in long-term public projects are highly sensitive to the social discount rate (SDR). We surveyed over 200 experts to disentangle disagreement on the risk-free SDR into its component parts, including pure time preference, the wealth effect, and return to capital. We show that the majority of experts do not follow the simple Ramsey Rule, a widely used theoretical discounting framework, when recommending SDRs. Despite disagreement on discounting procedures and poi...
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作者:Ganong, Peter; Liebman, Jeffrey B.
作者单位:University of Chicago; Harvard University
摘要:One-in-seven Americans received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in 2011, an all-time high. We analyze changes in program enrollment over the past two decades, quantifying the contributions of unemployment and state policy changes. Using instrumental variables to address measurement error, we estimate that a 1 percentage point increase in unemployment raises enrollment by 15 percent. Unemployment explains most of the decrease in enrollment in the late 1990s, state po...
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作者:Barr, Andrew; Turner, Sarah
作者单位:Texas A&M University System; Texas A&M University College Station; University of Virginia; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:For individuals who experience job loss, enrollment in postsecondary programs may provide an opportunity to improve future employment outcomes. However, decisions to enroll may be hampered by insufficient information about the benefits and costs and the necessary steps and assistance available to facilitate such investments. Using variation in the dissemination and timing of letters sent to Unemployment Insurance (UI) recipients containing this information, we find that individuals sent the in...
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作者:Nordhaus, William
作者单位:Yale University
摘要:Climate change remains one of the major international environmental challenges facing nations. Up to now, nations have adopted minimal policies to slow climate change. Moreover, there has been no major improvement in emissions trends as of the latest data. The current study uses the updated DICE model to develop new projections of trends and impacts of alternative climate policies. It also presents a new set of estimates of the uncertainties about future climate change and compares the results...
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作者:Kumar, Anil
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - Dallas
摘要:Texas is the only US state that limits home equity borrowing to 80 percent of home value. This paper exploits this policy discontinuity around Texas' interstate borders and uses a multidimensional regression discontinuity design framework to find that limits on home equity borrowing in Texas lowered the likelihood of mortgage default by about 1.5 percentage points for all mortgages and 4-5 percentage points for non-prime mortgages. Estimated non-prime mortgage default hazards within 25 to 100 ...
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作者:Falk, Nathan; Shelton, Cameron A.
作者单位:Claremont Colleges; Claremont McKenna College; Claremont Graduate University
摘要:It is found that electorally induced policy uncertainty decreases manufacturing investment in US states. In a state with average partisan polarization, the elasticity of election-year investment to a specific measure of policy uncertainty is -0.027. When the incumbent governor is term limited, there is greater uncertainty over the outcome, providing an instrument to demonstrate this effect is causal, not simply coincidental. Moreover, manufacturing investment does not rebound following the ele...
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作者:Kuziemko, Ilyana; Meckel, Katherine; Rossin-Slater, Maya
作者单位:Princeton University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; Stanford University; IZA Institute Labor Economics
摘要:Medicaid programs increasingly finance competing, capitated managed care plans rather than administering fee-for-service (FFS) programs. We study how the transition from FFS to managed care affects high- and low-cost infants (blacks and Hispanics, respectively). We find that black-Hispanic disparities widen-e.g., black mortality and preterm birth rates increase by 15 percent and 7 percent, respectively, while Hispanic mortality and preterm birth rates decrease by 22 percent and 7 percent, resp...