Health Insurance for “Humans”: Information Frictions, Plan Choice, and Consumer Welfare
结合行政数据和调查数据，识别消费者在健康保险选择中的风险偏好、信息摩擦和麻烦成本，并分析这些因素对福利评估的影响。
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.