V 1 seems to be an unfortunate fact of life that getting elected requires political parI ties to make sweeping promises in relation to any issue on which they feel vulner^ able. Such promises then have a strong tendency to stifle debate and creative thinking in areas where these are plainly needed. One such area in Australia is the goods and services tax, so closely associated with the failure ...

As is true of automobile insurance, a strong case can be made for a mandate that requires individuals to purchase health insurance rather than shifting costs to others. A mandate by itself, however, is likely to be regressive. By dealing with individual needs through the back door, an employer mandate generally keeps costs hidden and raises employment problems, while an employer subsidy will be...

This is one in a series of papers in the Retirement Security Project supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts.1 The Retirement Security Project is intended to bolster financial security for America's aging population by raising retirement savings and improving long-term care insurance products. It brings together pension researchers and health care experts to undertake nonpartisan re...

The investment decisions of small-scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can limit investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in which farmers were randomly assigned to receive cash grants, grants of or opportunities to purchase r...

This thesis studies the impact of private information on the existence of insurance markets. In the first chapter, I study the case of insurance rejections. Across a wide set of non-group insurance markets, applicants are rejected based on observable, often high-risk, characteristics. I explore private information as a potential cause by developing and testing a model in which agents have priva...

The investment decisions of small‐scale farmers in developing countries are conditioned by their financial environment. Binding credit market constraints and incomplete insurance can reduce investment in activities with high expected profits. We conducted several experiments in northern Ghana in which farmers were randomly assigned to receive cash grants, grants of or opportunities to purchase ...

The recent concept of ‘‘Health Insurance Marketplace’’ introduced to facilitate the purchase of health insurance by comparing different insurance plans in terms of price, coverage benefits, and quality designates a key role to the health insurance providers. Currently, the web based tools available to search for health insurance plans are deficient in offering personalized recommendations based...

Approximately half of people turning 65 years between 2015 and 2019 are projected to need long-term support and services. Yet the long-term care insurance (LTCI) market is depressed, with only 7.4 million people owning policies. The objective of this study was to provide an analysis of potential LTCI purchasers. We investigate (1) who wants to purchase LTCI, (2) what are the attitudes and belie...