Geruso Michael
Department of Economics, University of Texas at Austin and NBER.
Quant Econom. 2017 Nov;8(3):929-975. doi: 10.3982/qe794. Epub 2017 Nov 20.
In many markets insurers are barred from price discrimination based on consumer characteristics like age, gender, and medical history. In this paper, I build on a recent literature to show why such policies are inefficient if consumers differ in their willingness-to-pay for insurance conditional on the insured losses they generate. Using administrative claims data, I then show that this type of demand heterogeneity is empirically relevant in a consumer health plan setting. Younger and older consumers and men and women reveal strikingly different demand for health insurance, conditional on their objective medical spending risk. This implies that these groups must face different prices so as to sort themselves efficiently across insurance contracts. The theoretical and empirical analysis highlights a fundamental trade-off between equity and efficiency that is unique to selection markets.
在许多市场中，保险公司被禁止基于年龄、性别和病史等消费者特征进行价格歧视。在本文中，我借鉴近期的文献研究，以表明如果消费者在基于其产生的保险损失的保险支付意愿上存在差异，那么此类政策为何是无效率的。利用行政索赔数据，我进而表明这种需求异质性在消费者健康保险计划背景下具有实证相关性。较年轻和较年长的消费者以及男性和女性在其客观医疗支出风险的条件下，对健康保险的需求呈现出显著差异。这意味着这些群体必须面对不同的价格，以便在保险合同之间有效地进行自我分类。理论和实证分析凸显了选择市场所特有的公平与效率之间的基本权衡。
