Bankruptcy as Implicit Health Insurance
研究了破产制度如何为家庭提供隐性健康保险，发现资产豁免法影响无保险家庭的医疗支出和保险购买决策，并计算了最优惩罚规模。
This paper examines the implicit health insurance that households receive from the ability to declare bankruptcy. Exploiting multiple sources of variation in asset exemption law, I show that uninsured households with a greater financial cost of bankruptcy make higher out-of-pocket medical payments, conditional on the amount of care received. In turn, I find that households with greater wealth at risk are more likely to hold health insurance. The implicit insurance from bankruptcy distorts the insurance coverage decision. Using a microsimulation model, I calculate that the optimal Pigovian penalties are three-quarters as large as the average penalties under the Affordable Care Act.