Insuring Consumption Against Illness
利用印尼面板数据，研究家庭能否通过消费保险应对重大疾病冲击，发现保险机制不完善，存在显著经济成本。
One of the most sizable and least predictable shocks to economic opportunities in developing countries is major illness. We investigate the extent to which families are able to insure consumption against major illness using a unique panel data set from Indonesia that combines excellent measures of health status with consumption information. We find that there are significant economic costs associated with major illness, and that there is very imperfect insurance of consumption over illness episodes. These estimates suggest that public disability insurance or subsidies for medical care may improve welfare by providing consumption insurance.