Evolving Choice Inconsistencies in Choice of Prescription Drug Insurance
利用政府行政数据研究老年人对处方药保险计划的选择如何随时间演变，发现因未选择最低成本计划而产生的“放弃储蓄”随时间增长，且福利损失主要源于计划特征变化而非学习效应。
We study choice over prescription insurance plans by the elderly using government administrative data to evaluate how these choices evolve over time. We find large “foregone savings” from not choosing the lowest cost plan that has grown over time. We develop a structural framework to decompose the changes in “foregone welfare” from inconsistent choices into choice set changes and choice function changes from a fixed choice set. We find that foregone welfare increases over time due primarily to changes in plan characteristics such as premiums and out-of-pocket costs; we estimate little learning at either the individual or cohort level.