I exploit a major, unanticipated reform of the California teachers’ pension to provide quasiexperimental evidence on the link between pension generosity and retirement timing. Using two large administrative datasets, I conduct a reduced-form analysis of the pension reform and estimate a structural model of retirement timing. With both methods, I find that the rise in the price of retirement had...

This paper assesses how the particular form of interactions between the state and the market may have had its impact on China’s overall success in the past two decades in economic reform and development. In doing so, the question of development economics, i.e., the role of the state and the market in development, is discussed in a context of transition economics. Some key components of China’s ...

Tenured academics are not known for their firm grasp of reality. Medical malpractice policy seems to be an exception. In the thirty years that have passed since California adopted its paradigmatic malpractice reform legislation, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA),1 the health care system has changed dramatically. Annual spending on health care in the United States has ri...

Policymakers in countries around the world are faced with rising health care costs and are debating ways to reform health care to reduce expenditures. Estimates of price elasticity of expenditure are a key component for predicting expenditures under alternative policies. Using unique individual-level data compiled from administrative records from the Chilean private health insurance market, I e...

In Absolute or Relative Terms?How Framing Prices Affects the Consumer Price Sensitivity ofHealth Plan Choice This paper provides field evidence on (a) how price framing affects consumers’ decision toswitch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurancecan be influenced by policymakers through simple regulatory efforts. In 2009, in order to...

Commodity traders are often the focus of popular resentment. Food price hikes in 2007-2008 resulted in protests and food riots, and spurred governments to regulate traders. In March 2011, the Bangladesh Government banned Delivery Order traders (DOTs) in the edible oils market, citing cartelization, and replaced them with a dealer’s network appointed by upstream refiners. The reform provides a n...

Based on the wide application of relevant classical and modern economic thoughts, this paper analyzed the implications of price discovery and competition, compared the market auto adjustment mechanism and the government control of economy, explored market failure and price distortion, and drew the conclusion of the necessity of market mechanism design which is especially helpful for the reform ...

Nonlinear price schedules generally have heterogeneous effects on health-care demand. We develop and apply a finite mixture bivariate probit model to analyze whether there are heterogeneous reactions to the introduction of a nonlinear price schedule in the German statutory health insurance system. In administrative insurance claims data from the largest German health insurance plan, we find tha...

The major components of federal dairy policy — the price support program, federal milk marketing orders, and import quotas — have been in place for more than 50 years. These programs have tried to address the market effects which result from a commodity that is highly perishable; bulky (expensive to transport long distances); produced 365 days a year with a limited ability to alter short-run pr...

We study the relationship between regulatory regimes and pharmaceutical firms’ pricing strategies using a unique policy experiment from Norway, which in 2003 introduced a reference price (RP) system called “index pricing” for a sub-sample of off-patent pharmaceuticals, replacing the existing price cap (PC) regulation. We estimate the effect of the reform using a product level panel dataset, cov...