the american business cycle continuity and change in recent decades the american economy has experienced the worst peace time inflation in its history and the highest unemployment rate since the great depression these circumstances have prompted renewed interest in the concept of business cycles which joseph schumpeter suggested are like the beat of the heart of the essence of the organism that displays them in the american business cycle some of the most prominent macroeconomics in the united states focuses on the questions to what extent are business cycles propelled by external shocks how have post 1946 cycles differed from earlier cycles and what are the major factors that contribute to business cycles they extend their investigation in some areas as far back as 1875 to afford a deeper understanding of both economic history and the most recent economic fluctuations seven papers address specific aspects of economic activity consumption investment inventory change fiscal policy monetary behavior open economy and the labor market five papers focus on aggregate economic activity in a number of cases the papers present findings that challenge widely accepted models and assumptions in addition to its substantive findings the american business cycle includes an appendix containing both the first published history of the nber business cycle dating chronology and many previously unpublished historical data series

behavioral hazard in health insurance a fundamental implication of standard moral hazard models is overuse of low value medical care because copays are lower than costs in these models the demand curve alone can be used to make welfare statements a fact relied on by much empirical work there is ample evidence though that people misuse care for a different reason mistakes or behavioral hazard much high value care is underused even when patient costs are low and some useless care is bought even when patients face the full cost in the presence of behavioral hazard welfare calculations using only the demand curve can be off by orders of magnitude or even be the wrong sign we derive optimal copay formulas that incorporate both moral and behavioral hazard providing a theoretical foundation for value based insurance design and a way to interpret behavioral nudges once behavioral hazard is taken into account health insurance can do more than just provide financial protection it can also improve health care efficiency jel codes d03 i12 i13 i30 i38

nonmonetary effects of the financial crisis in propagation of the great depression this paper examines the effects of the financial crisis of the 1930s onthe path of aggregate output during that period our approach is complementary to that of friedman and schwartz who emphasized the monetary impact of the bank failures we focus on non monetary primarily credit related aspects of the financial sector output link and consider the problems of debtors as well as those of the banking system we argue that the financial disruptions of 1930 33 reduced the efficiency of the credit allocation process and that the resulting higher cost and reduced availability of credit acted to depress aggregate demand evidence suggests that effects of this type can help explain the unusual length and depth of the great depression this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

consequences of bank distress during the great depression the consequences of bank distress for the economy during the depression remain an area of unresolved controversy since john m keynes 1931 and irving fisher 1933 macroeconomists have argued that bank distress magnified the extent of the economic decline during the depression as the intermediaries controlling money and credit banks were in a special position to transmit their distress to other sectors but the mechanism through which banking distress mattered for the economy has been hotly contested milton friedman and anna j schwartz 1963 saw the contraction in the money multiplier driven in their view by panicked depositors withdrawals of deposits as the primary mechanism through which banking distress affected the real economy they described the mechanism transmitting banking distress to the real sector as operating at the national level through changes in the aggregate supply of money and interest rates bank distress reduced the money supply available to the public either through the closure of banks and the consequent freezing of bank deposits or the withdrawals of deposits by depositors that feared bank failure ben s bernanke 1983 building on fisher 1933 emphasized the transmission of monetary shocks via their effects on the balance sheets of borrowers and on the supply of credit by banks borrowers balance sheets were worsened by debt deflation as the result of fixed dollar debt obligations borrowers net worth and cash flow declined with the rising value of debt service costs relative to income borrowers with positive net present value projects but weak balance sheets had less internally generated retained earnings to invest and could not qualify for credit furthermore bernanke argued that the contraction of the money supply produced contraction of nominal income and prices relative to fixed debt service which weakened borrowers balance sheets and in turn weakened banks not only did firms financial distress reduce the number of qualified borrowers the contraction in banks net worth forced a reduction in the supply of bank loans to qualified borrowers many firms and individuals relied on banks for credit and as those banks suffered losses of capital due to asset value declines and contractions in deposits as depositors reacted to bank weakness by withdrawing their funds even borrowers with viable projects and strong balance sheets experienced a decrease in the effective supply of loanable funds bernanke termed the combined weakening of borrowers balance sheets and the contraction in bank credit supply a rise in the cost of credit intermediation the scarcity of perfect substitutes for the positive net present value investments of firms with weak balance sheets and for the credit supplied by existing banks implies that the weakening of firms and banks balance sheets the disappearance of banks and the contraction in surviving banks lending made it more difficult for the economy to channel funds to their best use thus what began as a contraction in aggregate demand became a contraction in aggregate supply which magnified adverse economic shocks and prolonged and deepened the depression the financial distress of firms and banks and the decline in bank lending were not only symptoms of the depression but means for magnifying the shocks that caused the depression bernanke s statistical evidence in support of this story is derived from time series analysis at the national level in calomiris graduate school of business 601 uris hall columbia university 3022 broadway new york ny 10027 and national bureau of economic research e mail cc374 columbia edu mason department of finance drexel university 3141 chestnut street philadelphia pa 19104 e mail joe mason drexel edu we thank valerie ramey david wheelock charles himmelberg steve zeldes gary gorton two referees and seminar participants at columbia university wharton northwestern university and the 2001 economic history association meetings for helpful comments on an earlier draft we gratefully acknowledge support from the national science foundation the university of illinois and the federal reserve bank of st louis

choose to lose health plan choices from a menu with dominated option we examine the health plan choices that 23 894 employees at a u s firm made from a large menu of options that differed only in financial cost sharing and premium these decisions provide a clear test of the predictions of the standard economic model of insurance choice in the absence of choice frictions because plans were priced so that nearly every plan with a lower deductible was financially dominated by an otherwise identical plan with a high deductible we document that the majority of employees chose dominated plans which resulted in excess spending equivalent to 24 of chosen plan premiums low income employees were significantly more likely to choose dominated plans and most employees did not switch into more financially efficient plans in the subsequent year we show that the choice of dominated plans cannot be rationalized by standard risk preference or any expectations about health risk testing alternative explanations with a series of hypothetical choice experiments we find that the popularity of dominated plans was not primarily driven by the size and complexity of the plan menu nor informed preferences for avoiding high deductibles but by employees lack of understanding of health insurance our findings challenge the standard practice of inferring risk preferences from insurance choices and raise doubts about the welfare benefits of health reforms that expand consumer choice

how product standardization affects choice evidence from the massachusetts health insurance exchange this paper examines the effect of choice architecture on massachusetts health insurance exchange a policy change standardized cost sharing parameters of plans across insurers and altered information presentation post change consumers chose more generous plans and different brands but were not more price sensitive we use a discrete choice model that allows the policy to affect how attributes are valued to decompose the policy s effects into a valuation effect and a product availability effect the brand shifts are largely explained by the availability effect and the generosity shift by the valuation effect a hypothetical choice experiment replicates our results and explores alternative counterfactuals

suit the action to the word the word to the action hypothetical choices and real decisions in medicare part d in recent years consumer choice has become an important element of public policy one reason is that consumers differ in their tastes and needs which they can express most easily through their own choices elements that strengthen consumer choice feature prominently in the design of public insurance markets for instance in the united states in the recent introduction of prescription drug coverage for older individuals via medicare part d for policy makers who design such a market an important practical question in the design phase of such a new program is how to deduce enrollment and plan selection preferences prior to its introduction in this paper we investigate whether hypothetical choice experiments can serve as a tool in this process we combine data from hypothetical and real plan choices elicited around the time of the introduction of medicare part d we first analyze how well the hypothetical choice data predict willingness to pay and market shares at the aggregate level we then analyze predictions at the individual level in particular how insurance demand varies with observable characteristics we also explore whether the extent of adverse selection can be predicted using hypothetical choice data alone

uninsured by choice a choice experiment on long term care insurance abstract we examine evidence from two unique discrete choice experiments dce on long term care insurance and values several of its relevant attributes more specifically the experiments examine choices made by a large sample made of 15 298 individuals in the united states with and without insurance we study the valuation of a number of insurance attributes namely the daily insurance benefit insurance coverage the compulsory and voluntary nature of the insurance policy design alongside the costs insurance premium and health requirements this paper elicits both respondents preferences and willingness to pay wtp for these care insurance s attributes using a random parameter logit model and assesses the heterogeneity of choice responses using demographic socioeconomic and attitudinal motivations to segment response to insurance choices we find that an increase in the insurance premium by an additional 100 would reduce insurance uptake by 1pp insurance policy uptake is higher when it provides benefits for the lifetime the monthly marginal wtp being 178 64 and voluntary the monthly marginal wtp increases by an extra 74 71 as opposed to universal and when it forgoes health checks the monthly marginal wtp increases by an extra 28us

branch banking bank competition and financial stability it is often argued that branching stabilizes banking systems by facilitating diversification of bank portfolios however previous empirical research on the great depression offers mixed support for this view using data on national banks from the 1920s and 1930s we show that branch banking raises the level of competition and increases exit from the banking system this consolidation strengthens the system as a whole without necessarily strengthening the branch banks themselves our empirical results suggest that the effects that branching had on competition were quantitatively more important than geographical diversification for bank stability in the 1920s and 1930s

financial factors in the great depression eginning with irving fisher 1933 and john maynard keynes 1931 b 1963 macroeconomists have argued that financial markets were important sources and propagators of decline during the great depression turning points during the depression often coincided with or were preceded by dramatic events in financial markets stock market collapse waves of bankruptcy and bank failure and contractions in the money stock but the mechanism through which financial factors contributed to the depression has been a source of controversy as has been the relative importance of financial factors in explaining the origins and persistence of the depression this essay reviews the literature on the role of financial factors in the depression and draws some lessons that have more general relevance for the study of the depression and for macroeconomics i argue that much of the recent progress that has been made in understanding some of the most important and puzzling aspects of financial real links in the depression followed a paradigm shift in economics a central neglected theoretical piece of the story for financial factors was the allocative effects of imperfections in capital markets which can imply links between disruptions in financial markets and subsequent economic activity also the increasing emphasis on learning and path dependence in economics has helped to explain why financial shocks during the 1930s were so severe and why policy makers failed to prevent the depression

the questionable value of having a choice of levels of health insurance coverage in most health insurance markets in the united states consumers have substantial choice about their health insurance plan however additional choice is not an unmixed blessing as it creates challenges related to both consumer confusion and adverse selection there is mounting evidence that many people have difficulty understanding the value of insurance coverage like evaluating the relative benefits of lower premiums versus lower deductibles also in most us health insurance markets people cannot be charged different prices for insurance based on their individual level of health risk this creates the potential for well known problems of adverse selection because people will often base the level of health insurance coverage they choose partly on their health status in this essay we examine how the forces of consumer confusion and adverse selection interact with each other and with market institutions to affect how valuable it is to have multiple levels of health insurance coverage available in the market

how individuals choose health insurance an experimental analysis an individual choosing a health insurance policy faces a complex decision environment where a large set of alternatives differ on a variety of dimensions there is uncertainty and the choice is repeated at least once a year we study decisions and decision strategies in a laboratory experiment where we create a controlled environment that closely mirrors this setting we use an electronic information board that allows to carefully monitor the individual s decision strategy the number of alternatives switching costs and the speed at which health deteriorates are varied across treatments we find that most subjects search is based more on attributes than on policies moreover we find that an increase in the number of alternatives increases decision making time makes subjects consider a lower fraction of the available information makes it more likely that subjects will switch and decreases the quality of their decisions the introduction of positive costs of switching makes people switch less often but improves the quality of their decisions finally if health deteriorates only gradually individuals tend to stick to their current policy too long

heuristics and heterogeneity in health insurance exchanges evidence from the massachusetts connector although health insurance exchanges are likely to be a growing source of individual coverage little is known about consumer behavior on these exchanges while health insurance exchanges are intended to facilitate competition among insurers and make it easier for consumers to access insurance understanding how consumers choose insurance plans is necessary for the design of these markets we characterize demand on a health insurance exchange including the type of plans individuals choose and how they respond to price previous work has noted the potential limits to consumer decision making ability in similar environments abaluck and gruber 2011 in a structural model of health plan choice we consider the role of heterogeneity in preferences and whether consumers rely on simple rules of thumb we offer a first look at behavior on massachusetts s unsubsidized health insurance exchange the connector 1 which was created

switching costs price sensitivity and health plan choice we investigate the extent to which sensitivity to health plan premiums differs across individuals according to characteristics related to the cost of switching plans our results indicate substantial variation in price sensitivity related to expected health care costs younger healthier employees are between two and four times more sensitive to price than employees who are older and who have been recently hospitalized or diagnosed with cancer we also find evidence of status quo bias estimated premium elasticities are significantly higher for new hires than for incumbent employees simulations combining our results with actuarial data illustrate the cost implications of risk related differences in price elasticity

double liability and bank risk taking this paper examines double liability as it existed in the united states prior to the great depression and assesses its impact upon bank risk taking under double liability shareholders of failing banks could lose in addition to the initial purchase price of shares an amount equal to the par value of shares owned this paper assesses whether or not banks chartered in states with double liability laws undertook less risk than banks operating under conventional limited liability the results suggest that double liability did reduce bank risk taking but did not guarantee bank stability in times of widespread financial distress

rational inattention competitive supply and psychometrics we introduce a simple method of recovering attention costs from choice data our method rests on a precise analogy with production theory costs of attention determine consumer demand and consumer welfare just as a competitive firm s technology determines its supply curve and profits we implement our recovery method experimentally outline applications and link our work to the broader literature on inattention and mistaken decisions

u s deficits since world war i the tax smoothing theory suggests that deficits would respond particularly to recession temporarily high government spending and anticipated inflation my empirical estimates indicate that a relation of this type is reasonably stable in the u s since at least 1916 in particular the statistical evidence does not support the idea that there has been a shift toward a fiscal policy that generates either more real public debt on average or that generates larger deficits in response to recessions further the deficits for 1982 3 and popular projections formed in 1984 for 1984 5 are consistent with the previous structure the high values of these deficits reflect the customary response to substantial recession interacting with big government and to expected inflation

dominated choices and medicare advantage enrollment research in behavioral economics suggests that certain circumstances such as large numbers of complex options or revisiting prior choices can lead to decision errors this paper explores the enrollment decisions of medicare beneficiaries in the medicare advantage ma program during the time period we study 2007 2010 private fee for service pffs plans offered enhanced benefits beyond those of traditional medicare tm without any restrictions on physician networks making tm a dominated choice relative to pffs yet more than three quarters of medicare beneficiaries remained in tm during our study period we analyze the role of status quo bias in explaining this pattern of enrollment our results suggest that status quo bias plays an important role the rate of ma enrollment was significantly higher among new medicare beneficiaries than among incumbents these results illustrate the importance of the choice environment that is in place when enrollees first enter the medicare program

comparison friction experimental evidence from medicare drug plans consumers need information to compare alternatives for markets to function efficiently recognizing this public policies often pair competition with easy access to comparative information the implicit assumption is that comparison friction the wedge between the availability of comparative information and consumers use of it is inconsequential because information is readily available and consumers will access this information and make effective choices we examine the extent of comparison friction in the market for medicare part d prescription drug plans in the united states in a randomized field experiment an intervention group received a letter with personalized cost information that information was readily available for free and widely advertised however this additional step providing the information rather than having consumers actively access it had an impact plan switching was 28 percent in the intervention group versus 17 percent in the comparison group and the intervention caused an average decline in predicted consumer cost of about 100 per year among letter recipients roughly 5 percent of the cost in the comparison group our results suggest that comparison friction can be large even when the cost of acquiring information is small and may be relevant for a wide range of public policies that incorporate consumer choice

equilibria in health exchanges adverse selection versus reclassification risk this paper studies equilibrium and welfare in a class of regulated health insurance markets known as exchanges we use detailed health plan choice and utilization data to model individual level i projected health risk and ii risk preferences we combine the estimated distributions of risk and risk preferences with a model of competitive insurance markets to predict allocations and prices

dynamic debt runs and financial fragility evidence from the 2007 abcp crisis we use the 2007 asset backed commercial paper abcp crisis as a laboratory to study the determinants of debt runs our model features dilution risk maturing short term lenders demand higher yields in compensation for being diluted by future lenders making runs more likely the model explains the observed tenfold increase in yield spreads leading to runs and the positive relation between yield spreads and future runs results from structural estimation show that runs are very sensitive to leverage asset values and asset liquidity but less sensitive to the degree of maturity mismatch the strength of guarantees and asset volatility

financial development and pathways of growth state branching and deposit insurance laws in the united states 1900 1940 abstract this paper studies the effect of state level banking regulation on financial development and on components of state level growth in the united states from 1900 to 1940 we use these banking laws to assess the findings of a large recent literature that has argued that financial development contributes to economic growth we contend that the institutional mechanism leading to financial development is important in determining its consequences and that some types of financial development can even retard economic growth for the united states from 1900 to 1940 we argue that the financial expansion induced by expanded bank branching accelerated the mechanization of agriculture and spurred growth in manufacturing in contrast financial expansions induced by state deposit insurance had negative consequences for both the agricultural and manufacturing sectors

local banking panics of the 1920s identification and determinants abstract using a newly discovered dataset of u s bank suspensions from 1921 to 1929 we discovered that banking panics were more common in the 1920s than had been believed besides identifying panics we investigate their determinants finding that local banking panics were more likely when fundamental economic conditions were generally weak and more likely in overbanked states they were less likely in states with deposit insurance or states where a relatively large share of banks belonged to chain banking organizations

frictions or mental gaps what s behind the information we don t use and when do we care consumers suffer significant losses from not acting on available information these losses stem from frictions such as search costs switching costs and rational inattention as well as what we call mental gaps resulting from wrong priors worldviews or relevant features of a problem not being top of mind most research studying such losses does not empirically distinguish between these mechanisms instead we show that most highly cited papers in this area presume one mechanism underlies consumer choices and assume away other potential explanations or collapse many mechanisms together we discuss the empirical difficulties that arise in distinguishing between different mechanisms and some promising approaches for making progress in doing so we also assess when it is more or less important for researchers to distinguish between these mechanisms approaches that seek to identify true value from demand without specifying mechanisms behind this wedge are most useful when researchers are interested in evaluating allocation policies that strongly steer consumers towards better options with regulation traditional policy instruments and defaults on the other hand understanding the precise mechanisms underlying consumer losses is essential to predicting the impact of mechanism policies aimed primarily at reducing specific frictions or mental gaps without otherwise steering consumers we make the case that papers engaging with these questions empirically should be clear about whether their analyses distinguish between mechanisms behind poorly informed choices and what that implies for the questions they can answer we present examples from several empirical contexts to highlight these distinctions

sinking swimming or learning to swim in medicare part d under medicare part d senior citizens choose prescription drug insurance offered by numerous private insurers we examine nonpoor enrollees actions in 2006 and 2007 using panel data our sample reduced overspending by 298 on average with gains by 81 percent of them the greatest improvements were by those who overspent most in 2006 and by those who switched plans decisions to switch depended on individuals overspending in 2006 and on individualspecific effects of changes in their current plans the oldest consumers and those initiating medications for alzheimer s disease improved by more than average suggesting that real world institutions help overcome cognitive limitations

take up and targeting experimental evidence from snap this paper develops a framework for evaluating the welfare impact of various interventions designed to increase take up of social safety net programs in the presence of potential behavioral biases we calibrate the key parameters using a randomized field experiment in which 30 000 elderly individuals not enrolled in but likely eligible for the supplemental nutrition assistance program snap are either provided with information that they are likely eligible provided with this information and also offered assistance in applying or are in a status quo control group only 6 percent of the control group enrolls in snap over the next 9 months compared to 11 percent of the information only group and 18 percent of the information plus assistance group the individuals who apply or enroll in response to either intervention receive lower benefits and are less sick than the average enrollee in the control group the results are consistent with the existence of optimization frictions that are greater for needier individuals suggesting that the poor targeting properties of the interventions reduce their welfare gains

how much to save decision costs and retirement plan participation abstract deciding how much to save for retirement can be complicated drawing on a field experiment conducted with the department of defense we study whether such complexity depresses participation in an employer sponsored retirement saving plan we find that simplifying one dimension of the enrollment decision by highlighting a potential rate at which non participants might contribute increases participation in the plan similar communications that did not include a highlighted rate yield smaller effects the results highlight how reducing complexity on the intensive margin of a decision how much to contribute can affect extensive margin behavior whether to contribute at all in a setting of policy interest

shrouded attributes consumer myopia and information suppression in competitive markets bayesian consumers infer that hidden add on prices e g the cost of ink for a printer are likely to be high prices if consumers are bayesian firms will not shroud information in equilibrium however shrouding may occur in an economy with some myopic or unaware consumers such shrouding creates an inefficiency which firms may have an incentive to eliminate by educating their competitors customers however if add ons have close substitutes a curse of debiasing arises and firms will not be able to profitably debias consumers by unshrouding add ons in equilibrium two kinds of exploitation coexist optimizing firms exploit myopic consumers through marketing schemes that shroud high priced add ons in turn sophisticated consumers exploit these marketing schemes it is not possible to profitably drive away the business of sophisticates it is also not possible to profitably lure either myopes or sophisticates to nonexploitative firms we show that informational shrouding flourishes even in highly competitive markets even in markets with costless advertising and even when the shrouding generates allocational inefficiencies

which banks choose deposit insurance evidence of adverse selection and moral hazard in a voluntary insurance system this article investigates adverse selection and moral hazard in the voluntary deposit insurance system of kansas which operated from 1909 to 1929 regulations were imposed to limit risk taking and membership was made voluntary to assuage objections that insurance forces conservative banks to protect depositors of high risk institutions the authors find however that risk prone banks were the most likely to join the system at its inception using a simultaneous equations model they also detect both adverse selection and moral hazard behavior throughout the system s first ten years copyright 1995 by ohio state university press

health insurance for humans information frictions plan choice and consumer welfare traditional models of insurance choice are predicated on fully informed and rational consumers protecting themselves from exposure to financial risk in practice choosing an insurance plan is a complicated decision often made without full information in this paper we combine new administrative data on health plan choices and claims with unique survey data on consumer information to identify risk preferences information frictions and hassle costs our additional friction measures are important predictors of choices and meaningfully impact risk preference estimates we study the implications of counterfactual insurance allocations to illustrate the importance of distinguishing between these micro foundations for welfare analysis

paying attention or paying too much in medicare part d we study whether people became less likely to switch medicare prescription drug plans pdps due to more options and more time in part d panel data for a random 20 percent sample of enrollees from 2006 2010 show that 50 percent were not in their original pdps by 2010 individuals switched pdps in response to higher costs of their status quo plans saving them money contrary to choice overload larger choice sets increased switching unless the additional plans were relatively expensive neither switching overall nor responsiveness to costs declined over time and above minimum spending in 2010 remained below the 2006 and 2007 levels

the effect of bank failures on economic activity evidence from u s states in the early 20th century this paper provides evidence documenting the existence of a bank failure channel the magnifying effect of bank failures on economic distress using state level quarterly time series from 1900q1 to 1929q4 we estimate a vector autoregression model of bank failures for each state the forecast error variance decompositions are used to construct a categorical measure of the bank failure channel we examine the influence of regulatory variables economic conditions and banking conditions on the degree to which bank failures propagate distress state sponsored deposit insurance and minimum capital requirements are important for explaining the likelihood of having a bank failure channel

estimating welfare in insurance markets using variation in prices we provide a graphical illustration of how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to quantify the welfare loss associated with inefficient pricing in insurance markets with selection we then show how this welfare loss can be estimated empirically using identifying variation in the price of insurance such variation together with quantity data allows us to estimate the demand for insurance the same variation together with cost data allows us to estimate how insurers costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price the slope of this estimated cost curve provides a direct test for both the existence and the nature of selection and the combination of demand and cost curves can be used to estimate welfare we illustrate our approach by applying it to data on employerprovided health insurance from one specific company we detect adverse selection but estimate that the quantitative welfare implications associated with inefficient pricing in our particular application are small in both absolute and relative terms

contextual inference in markets on the informational content of product lines context can influence decisions this malleability of choice is usually invoked as evidence that people do not maximize stable preference orderings in a market equilibrium however context conveys payoff relevant information to consumers consequently these consumers rationally violate naive formulations of standard choice theoretic principles i identify informational asymmetries under which apparently anomalous behaviors namely the compromise effect and choice overload arise as market equilibria firms respond to consumers contextual inference in case of the compromise effect a firm may introduce premium loss leaders expensive goods of overly high quality that increase the demand for other goods

designed to fail effects of the default option and information complexity on student loan repayment abstract within five years of leaving school 25 of student loan borrowers default on required minimum payments these defaults are costly they add to interest and penalties on loans and lower credit scores which limits access to future credit and can adversely affect job prospects we ask why so few student loan borrowers enroll in income driven repayment idr plans which insure against default caused by low earnings to do so we run an incentivized laboratory experiment using a facsimile of the government s student loan exit counseling website we test the roles information complexity uncertainty about earnings and the default option play we find that switching the default option from the standard plan with fixed minimum payments to an idr with income contingent minimum payments and providing good information about earnings can dramatically decrease choice of the risky standard plan

the red and the black mental accounting of savings and debt in the standard economic account of consumer behavior the cost of a purchase takes the form of a reduction in future utility when expenditures that otherwise could have been made are forgone the reality of consumer hedonics is different when people make purchases they often experience an immediate pain of paying which can undermine the pleasure derived from consumption the ticking of the taxi meter for example reduces one s pleasure from the ride we propose a double entry mental accounting theory that describes the nature of these reciprocal interactions between the pleasure of consumption and the pain of paying and draws out their implications for consumer behavior and hedonics a central assumption of the model which we call prospective accounting is that consumption that has already been paid for can be enjoyed as if it were free and that the pain associated with payments made prior to consumption but not after is buffered by thoughts of the benefits that the payments will finance another important concept is coupling which refers to the degree to which consumption calls to mind thoughts of payment and vice versa some financing methods such as credit cards tend to weaken coupling whereas others such as cash payment produce tight coupling our model makes a variety of predictions that are at variance with economic formulations contrary to the standard prediction that people will finance purchases to minimize the present value of payments our model predicts strong debt aversion that they should prefer to prepay for consumption or to get paid for work after it is performed such pay before sequences confer hedonic benefits because consumption can be enjoyed without thinking about the need to pay for it in the future likewise when paying beforehand the pain of paying is mitigated by thoughts of future consumption benefits contrary to the economic prediction that consumers should prefer to pay at the margin for what they consume our model predicts that consumers will find it less painful to pay for and hence will prefer flat rate pricing schemes such as unlimited internet access at a fixed monthly price even if it involves paying more for the same usage other predictions concern spending patterns with cash charge or credit cards and preferences for the earmarking of purchases we test these predictions in a series of surveys and in a conjoint like analysis that pitted our double entry mental accounting model against a standard discounting formulation and another benchmark that did not incorporate hedonic interactions between consumption and payments our model provides a better fit of the data for 60 of the subjects the discounting formulation provides a better fit for only 29 of the subjects even when allowing for positive and negative discount rates the pain of paying we argue plays an important role in consumer self regulation but is hedonically costly from a hedonic perspective the ideal situation is one in which payments are tightly coupled to consumption so that paying evokes thoughts about the benefits being financed but consumption is decoupled from payments so that consumption does not evoke thoughts about payment from an efficiency perspective however it is important for consumers to be aware of what they are paying for consumption this creates a tension between hedonic efficiency and what we call decision efficiency various institutional arrangements such as financing of public parks through taxes or usage fees play into this tradeoff a producer developing a pricing structure for their product or service should be aware of these two conflicting objectives and should try to devise a structure that reconciles them

are banks really special new evidence from the fdic induced failure of healthy banks the fdic used cross guarantees in order to close 38 subsidiaries of first republicbank corporation in 1988 and 18 subsidiaries of first city bankcorporation in 1992 when lead banks from each of these texas based bank holding companies were declared insolvent i use this plausibly exogenous failure of otherwise healthy subsidiary banks as a natural experiment in order to study the impact of bank failure on local area real economic activity the resolution of these institutions was associated with a significant decline in failed bank lending that led to a permanent reduction in real county income of about 3 percent jel codes e5 g18 g33 keywords bank failures cross guarantee uniqueness of banks

overconfidence insurance and paternalism it is well known that when agents are fully rational compulsory public insurance may make all agents better off in the rothschild and stiglitz 1976 model of insurance markets we find that when sufficiently many agents underestimate their personal risks compulsory insurance makes low risk agents worse off hence behavioral biases may weaken some of the well established rationales for government intervention based on asymmetric information

design choices in privatized social security systems learning from the swedish experience in the 2000 u s presidential campaign george w bush advocated a partial privatization of the social security system according to his plan a portion of the payroll tax would be designated for individual savings accounts at the same time as this issue was being debated in the united states sweden was in the process of launching a system that is very similar to president bush s proposal although bush s plan did not get much attention in the early years of his administration the proposal may resurface either in the united states or in other countries if so important lessons can be learned from the swedish experience in particular the swedish plan adopted an interesting mix of design choices that can now be evaluated based on three years of post implementation experience although there is a large literature in economics on the design of social security systems most of that literature is concerned with macroeconomic considerations such as funding in contrast there has been much less attention devoted to the details of how plans might be designed in part because these details do not seem important from a standard economic perspective in this paper we reverse this usual pattern and focus our attention on the design aspects of the swedish plan we find that although most of the design choices are those that might be approved by most economists in some cases these choices produced undesirable consequences

choice inconsistencies among the elderly evidence from plan choice in the medicare part d program we evaluate the choices of elders across their insurance options under the medicare part d prescription drug plan using a unique data set of prescription drug claims matched to information on the characteristics of choice sets we document that elders place much more weight on plan premiums than on expected out of pocket costs value plan financial characteristics beyond any impacts on their own financial expenses or risk and place almost no value on variance reducing aspects of plans partial equilibrium welfare analysis implies that welfare would have been 27 higher if patients had all chosen rationally

regulations market structure institutions and the cost of financial intermediation this paper examines the impact of bank regulations market structure and national institutions on bank net interest margins and overhead costs using data on over 1400 banks across 72 countries while controlling for bankspecific characteristics the data indicate that tighter regulations on bank entry and bank activities boost the cost of financial intermediation inflation also exerts a robust positive impact on bank margins and overhead costs while concentration is positively associated with net interest margins this relationship breaksdownwhencontrolling for regulatory impediments to competition and inflation furthermore bank regulations become insignificant when controlling for national indicators of economic freedom or property rights protection while these institutional indicators robustly explain cross bank net interest margins and overhead expenditures thus bank regulations cannot be viewed in isolation they reflect broad national approaches to private property and competition

adverse selection and inertia in health insurance markets when nudging hurts this paper investigates consumer inertia in health insurance markets where adverse selection is a potential concern we leverage a major change to insurance provision that occurred at a large firm to identify substantial inertia and develop and estimate a choice model that also quantifies risk preferences and ex ante health risk we use these estimates to study the impact of policies that nudge consumers toward better decisions by reducing inertia when aggregated these improved individual level choices substantially exacerbate adverse selection in our setting leading to an overall reduction in welfare that doubles the existing welfare loss from adverse selection jel d82 g22 i13 a number of potential impediments stand in the way of efficient health insur ance markets the most noted of these is adverse selection first studied by akerlof 1970 and rothschild and stiglitz 1976 in insurance markets prices reflect the expected risk costs of the insured pool whether the reason is price regulation or private information when insurers cannot price all risk characteristics riskier consumers choose more comprehensive health plans this causes the equilibrium prices of these plans to rise and healthier enrollees to select less comprehensive coverage than they would otherwise prefer

estimating risk preferences from deductible choice we develop a structural econometric model to estimate risk preferences from data on deductible choices in auto insurance contracts we account for adverse selection by modeling unobserved heterogeneity in both risk claim rate and risk aversion we find large and skewed heterogeneity in risk attitudes in addition women are more risk averse than men risk aversion exhibits a u shape with respect to age and proxies for income and wealth are positively associated with absolute risk aversion finally unobserved heterogeneity in risk aversion is greater than that of risk and as we illustrate has important implications for insurance pricing

reference dependent risk attitudes we use koszegi and rabin s 2006 model of reference dependent utility and an extension of it that applies to decisions with delayed consequences to study preferences over monetary risk because our theory equates the reference point with recent probabilistic beliefs about outcomes it predicts specific ways in which the environment influences attitudes toward modest scale risk it replicates classical prospect theory including the prediction of distaste for insuring losses when exposure to risk is a surprise but implies first order risk aversion when a risk and the possibility of insuring it are anticipated a prior expectation to take on risk decreases aversion to both the anticipated and additional risk for large scale risk the model allows for standard consumption utility to dominate reference dependent gain loss utility generating nearly identical risk aversion across situations

choice price competition and complexity in markets for health insurance abstract the united states and other nations rely on consumer choice and price competition between competing health plans to allocate resources in the health sector while a great deal of research has examined the efficiency consequences of adverse selection in health insurance markets less attention has been devoted to other aspects of consumer choice the nation of switzerland offers a unique opportunity to study price competition in health insurance markets switzerland regulates health insurance markets with the aim of minimizing adverse selection and encouraging strong price competition we examine consumer responses to price differences in local markets and the degree of price variation in local markets using both survey data and observations on local markets we obtain evidence suggesting that as the number of choices offered to individuals grows their willingness to switch plans given a set of price dispersion differences declines which allows large price differences for relatively homogeneous products to persist we consider explanations for this phenomenon from economics and psychology

bank asset liquidation and the propagation of the u s great depression we hypothesize that financial disintermediation during and after the great depression arose from the slow liquidation of failed bank deposits empirical results from incorporating the stock of failed national bank deposits for the period 1921 40 in vector autoregression var models suggest that the stock of deposits in closed banks undergoing liquidation is as important as money stock in terms of explaining output changes over forecast horizons from one to three years hence we infer that the dynamic effects of banking sector shocks were cumulative and pervasive during and after the depression