Health Insurance :)
What are some reasons an individual might choose not to purchase health insurance?
With perfect information and fully rational producers and consumers, does it matter if the tax is an excise tax or a sales tax, and why or why not?
Please give an example of a pension plan structure from either the US or a foreign country and explain it
What was the number of our classroom in Sanford all semester?
Sanford 05
What is the main difference when comparing insurance coverage Pre-ACA to insurance coverage Post-ACA?
Pre-ACA: The difference seemed mostly from higher private spending; but public insurance used to cover only ~30% of the US population
Post-ACA (now ~18% of GDP): Public insurance expanded to cover >50% of people and 61% of expenses (Medicare – 17%, Medicaid – 19%, ACA plans – 16%)
Many economists argue that payroll tax incidence falls largely on workers (based on the relative elasticities of supply and demand curves for labor). Please explain.
Provide and explain concisely an example of a real-world policy intended to help the poor that actually largely benefits the non-poor.
Please explain to me the process of downloading and using an electronic blue book, which you'll need for the exam.
Moral hazard in health care. There are two sides to moral hazard in health insurance markets. What are they? Describe them concisely in words.
Explain the idea of optimal commodity (Ramsey rule) taxation, as best you can.
Set commodity taxes where:
MDWLi / MRi = λ
MDWLi = marginal DWL from increasing tax on good i;
MRi = marginal revenue raised from the tax increase;
λ = the value of additional government revenue (relative to leaving it in private hands)
List the potentially problematic assumptions behind the Tiebout model in bullet form.
Depends on a number of assumptions
- Perfect mobility (no cost to move)
- Perfect information on the taxes paid and the precise benefits received from the locality
- Sufficiently large number of localities to choose from
- Efficiencies of scale for providing many public goods with fixed costs (e.g. schools): These do not create problems
Where was Professor Jeuland when he was a member of the Peace Corps?
Mali
Explain what happens to the demand for health services when individuals are covered by health insurance, based on the common structure of health care provision.
Cawley and Frisvold argue that low pass-through suggests the Berkeley tax was ineffective at changing behavior. Do you agree with this assessment, and why or why not?
How can one balance the economic argument in favor of redistribution with the idea that a progressive income tax is economically inefficient?
Professor Jeuland assigned a paper to the syllabus that he worked on. What was the subject of this paper?
Using Private Demand Studies to Calculate Socially Optimal Vaccine Subsidies in Developing Countries
Explain the problem of adverse selection and provide intuition for why it is so severe in the context of private health insurance.
Adverse selection occurs in health insurance when there is an imbalance of high-risk, sick policyholders to healthy policyholders. The imbalance can happen due to sick individuals, who require more insurance, using more coverage and purchasing more policies than the healthy individuals, who need less coverage and may not buy a policy at all.
Briefly discuss the the following:
main advantages (theoretical and practical) of a wealth tax
the main challenges (theoretical and practical) with a wealth tax in practice
Good exam question: What would an unconditional cash transfer look like?
Where were my office hours located and when (partial credit available)?
Rubenstein Hall 242