Browsing by Author "Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Access to Health Insurance and the Use of Inpatient Medical Care: Evidence from the Affordable Care Act Young Adult Mandate
    (Elsevier, 2015-01) Antwi, Yaa Akosa; Moriya, Asako S.; Simon, Kosali; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    The Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded coverage to young adults by allowing them to remain on their parent's private health insurance until they turn 26 years old. While there is evidence on insurance effects, we know very little about use of general or specific forms of medical care. We study the implications of the expansion on inpatient hospitalizations. Given the prevalence of mental health needs for young adults, we also specifically study mental health related inpatient care. We find evidence that compared to those aged 27–29 years, treated young adults aged 19–25 years increased their inpatient visits by 3.5 percent while mental illness visits increased 9.0 percent. The prevalence of uninsurance among hospitalized young adults decreased by 12.5 percent; however, it does not appear that the intensity of inpatient treatment changed despite the change in reimbursement composition of patients.
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    Counting unreported abortions: A binomial-thinned zero-inflated Poisson model
    (2017-01) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    Background: Self-reported counts of intentional abortions in demographic surveys are significantly lower than the actual counts. To estimate the extent of misreporting, previous research has required either a gold standard or a validation sample. However, in most cases, a gold standard or a validation sample is not available. Objective: Our main intention here is to show that a researcher has an alternative tool to estimate the extent of underreporting in a given dataset, particularly when neither a valid gold standard nor a validation sample is available. Methods: We adopt a binomial-thinned zero-inflated Poisson model and apply it to a sample dataset, the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), for which an alternative estimate of the average reporting rate (38%) is available. We show how this model could be used to estimate the reporting probabilities of intentional abortions by each individual in addition to the overall average reporting rate. Results: Our model estimates the average reporting rate in the NSFG during 2006‒2013 as 35.3% (SE 8.2%). Individual reporting probabilities vary significantly. Conclusions: Our estimate of the average reporting rate of the dataset used is qualitatively and statistically similar to the available alternative estimate.
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    The equivalence of three latent class models and ML estimators
    (Elsevier, 2016-04) Tennekoon, Vidhura S.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    The purpose of this letter is to show the equivalence of three latent class models; the switching regression model with endogenous switching and a latent outcome (the binary Roy model), the probit model with a systematically misclassified dependent variable, and a trivariate probit model with partial observability. The probit model with measurement error is an enhanced version of existing models which allows for the potential correlation between error terms. Establishing this connection, we hope, will help a researcher working on one of these classes of estimators to benefit from the literature and software related to other families.
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    Group Contests with Internal Conflict and Power Asymmetry
    (Wiley, 2016-10) Choi, Jay Pil; Chowdhury, Subhasish M.; Kim, Jaesoo; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    We investigate simultaneous inter- and intra-group conflict in the shadow of within-group power asymmetry and complementarity in members' group-conflict efforts. A more symmetric group faces a higher degree of internal conflict, and might expend more effort in external conflict when the group-conflict effort technology is highly complementary. Depending on the degree of complementarity, the stronger player's relative contribution to external conflict might be higher in a more asymmetric group and, as a result, it is possible for the weaker player to earn a higher payoff. In the absence of any complementarity, the rent-dissipation is non-monotonic with the within-group power asymmetry.
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    Information Disclosure and the Equivalence of Prospective Payment and Cost Reimbursement
    (Elsevier, 2015-09) Ma, Ching-to Albert; Mak, Henry Y.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    A health care provider chooses unobservable service-quality and cost-reduction efforts. The efforts produce quality and cost efficiency. An insurer observes quality and cost, and chooses how to disclose this information to consumers. The insurer also decides how to pay the provider. In prospective payment, the insurer fully discloses quality, and sets a prospective payment price. In cost reimbursement, the insurer discloses a value index, a weighted average of quality and cost efficiency, and pays a margin above cost. The first-best quality and cost efforts can be implemented by prospective payment and by cost reimbursement. Cost reimbursement with value index eliminates dumping and cream skimming. Prospective payment with quality index eliminates cream skimming.
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    Managerial Beliefs and Incentive Policies
    (Elsevier, 2015-11) Kim, Jaesoo; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    This article examines incentive contracts under moral hazard when a principal and agents disagree about the likelihood that a task will succeed. The direction of disagreement alters the effectiveness of monetary incentives. The principal's optimal contract is a relative performance evaluation when she is more optimistic than the agents, and a joint performance evaluation when she is less optimistic. We further show why disagreement may prevail in organizations by considering a simple job assignment problem.
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    The Pot Calling the Kettle Black? A Comparison of Measures of Current Tobacco Use
    (2016) Tennekoon, Vidhura; Rosenman, Robert; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
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    Provider Performance Reports and Consumer Welfare
    (Wiley, 2017) Mak, Henry Y.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    A provider's performance report consists of his service average outcome and volume. The two variables depend on the provider's private quality type and current demand, but he can raise his average outcome by dumping vulnerable consumers. Prospective consumers infer providers' qualities from their reports. Performance reporting drives some providers to dump consumers when competition is intense, but it may not reveal providers' qualities when their average quality is high. Statistical adjustment aiming at making reports independent of consumer characteristics can lead to more dumping, less informative reports, or both. There is more dumping when volume information is withheld and less dumping when ratings information is coarse.
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    Raising charitable children: the effects of verbal socialization and role-modeling on children’s giving
    (Springer, 2017-01) Estell, David B.; Perdue, Neil H.; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    This paper uses nationally-representative data from the PSID and CDS to estimate the causal effects of two parent socialization actions—talking to children about giving and role-modeling—on children’s decisions whether or not to give to charity. We develop an identification framework based on the intra-household allocation and cultural transmission literatures that shows how different assumptions about parental response to time-varying unobserved changes in children’s prosocial values can be combined with the child fixed effects estimate and the difference between siblings’ over-time-differences estimate to infer a bound on the causal effect of parental action to socialize their children. Under the identifying assumption we think is most reasonable for socializing the willingness to give to charity, that parents treat the socialization actions of others as cultural substitutes, our estimates imply that talking to children about giving raises the probability of children’s giving by at least .13. We find no evidence that parental role-modeling affects children’s giving, except among non-African-American girls. The identification framework and substantive results have implications for those with a general interest in using data from naturalistic settings to estimate causal effects of parental socialization actions, those interested in the external validity of laboratory findings, and those interested in the socialization of warm glow.
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    The Role of Marriage in the Causal Pathway from Economic Conditions Early in Life to Mortality
    (Elsevier, 2015-03) van den Berg, Gerard J.; Gupta, Sumedha; Department of Economics, School of Liberal Arts
    This paper analyzes the interplay between early-life conditions and marital status, as determinants of adult mortality. We use individual data from Dutch registers (years 1815–2000), combined with business cycle conditions in childhood as indicators of early-life conditions. The empirical analysis estimates bivariate duration models of marriage and mortality, allowing for unobserved heterogeneity. Results show that conditions around birth and school going ages are important for marriage and mortality. Men typically enjoy a protective effect of marriage, whereas women suffer during childbearing ages. However, having been born under favorable economic conditions reduces female mortality during childbearing ages.