Download or read book Essays on Insurance and Taxation written by Marika Ilona Cabral and published by Stanford University. This book was released on 2011 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of four distinct essays. In an essay entitled "Claim Timing and Ex Post Adverse Selection: Evidence from Dental 'Insurance, ' " I explore the impact of strategic timing on insurance market allocations. If people can delay a claim just long enough to buy more insurance coverage in anticipation of it, severe adverse selection may result, and in extreme cases, this can lead to the complete unraveling of an insurance market. I study these forces by analyzing dental treatments and insurance, with the goal of understanding insurance in the market for dental care and also revealing lessons that apply to insurance markets more broadly. Using rich claim-level data from a large firm, my analysis reveals that the strategic delay of treatment and the associated adverse selection may be an important factor in explaining why so few people have dental coverage in the US and why typical dental "insurance" contracts provide so little insurance. More generally, my results suggest that insurance products without contract features designed to limit coverage for strategically delayed costs (e.g., open-enrollment periods, pricing pre-existing conditions) may generate unraveling. An essay entitled "The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts" (with Caroline Hoxby), explores the relationship between the salience of the property tax and observed property tax rates. We hypothesize that high salience explains the unpopularity of the property tax, the level of the property tax, and prevalence of property tax revolts. To identify variation in the salience of the property tax over local jurisdictions and over time, we exploit conditionally random variation in tax escrow, a method of paying the property tax that makes it much less salient. We find that areas in which the property tax is less salient are areas in which property taxes are higher and property tax revolts are less likely to occur. In an essay entitled "Private Coverage and Public Costs: Identifying the Effect of Private Supplemental Insurance on Medicare Spending" (with Neale Mahoney), we explore the impact of private supplemental insurance on Medicare spending. Private supplemental insurance to "fill the gaps" of Medicare, known as Medigap, is very popular. We estimate the impact of this supplemental insurance on total medical spending using an instrumental variables strategy that leverages discontinuities in Medigap premiums at state boundaries. Our estimates suggest that Medigap increases medical spending by 57 percent---or about 40 percent more than previous estimates suggest. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that a 20 percent tax on premiums would generate combined revenue and savings of 6.2 percent of Medicare baseline costs. An essay entitled "The Effect of Insurance Coverage on Preventive Care" (with Mark Cullen), explores the effect of insurance coverage on preventive care utilization. Using health insurance claims data from a large company, this paper examines the implementation of an insurance benefit design which differentially increased the marginal price of curative care (non-preventive care) while decreasing the marginal price of prevention. We examine the effect of the differential price change on the use of preventive procedures. We reveal evidence consistent with an important negative cross-price effect; that is, increases in the price of curative care can depress preventive care utilization.
Download or read book Essays on Insurance and Taxation written by Marika Ilona Cabral and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of four distinct essays. In an essay entitled "Claim Timing and Ex Post Adverse Selection: Evidence from Dental 'Insurance, ' " I explore the impact of strategic timing on insurance market allocations. If people can delay a claim just long enough to buy more insurance coverage in anticipation of it, severe adverse selection may result, and in extreme cases, this can lead to the complete unraveling of an insurance market. I study these forces by analyzing dental treatments and insurance, with the goal of understanding insurance in the market for dental care and also revealing lessons that apply to insurance markets more broadly. Using rich claim-level data from a large firm, my analysis reveals that the strategic delay of treatment and the associated adverse selection may be an important factor in explaining why so few people have dental coverage in the US and why typical dental "insurance" contracts provide so little insurance. More generally, my results suggest that insurance products without contract features designed to limit coverage for strategically delayed costs (e.g., open-enrollment periods, pricing pre-existing conditions) may generate unraveling. An essay entitled "The Hated Property Tax: Salience, Tax Rates, and Tax Revolts" (with Caroline Hoxby), explores the relationship between the salience of the property tax and observed property tax rates. We hypothesize that high salience explains the unpopularity of the property tax, the level of the property tax, and prevalence of property tax revolts. To identify variation in the salience of the property tax over local jurisdictions and over time, we exploit conditionally random variation in tax escrow, a method of paying the property tax that makes it much less salient. We find that areas in which the property tax is less salient are areas in which property taxes are higher and property tax revolts are less likely to occur. In an essay entitled "Private Coverage and Public Costs: Identifying the Effect of Private Supplemental Insurance on Medicare Spending" (with Neale Mahoney), we explore the impact of private supplemental insurance on Medicare spending. Private supplemental insurance to "fill the gaps" of Medicare, known as Medigap, is very popular. We estimate the impact of this supplemental insurance on total medical spending using an instrumental variables strategy that leverages discontinuities in Medigap premiums at state boundaries. Our estimates suggest that Medigap increases medical spending by 57 percent--or about 40 percent more than previous estimates suggest. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that a 20 percent tax on premiums would generate combined revenue and savings of 6.2 percent of Medicare baseline costs. An essay entitled "The Effect of Insurance Coverage on Preventive Care" (with Mark Cullen), explores the effect of insurance coverage on preventive care utilization. Using health insurance claims data from a large company, this paper examines the implementation of an insurance benefit design which differentially increased the marginal price of curative care (non-preventive care) while decreasing the marginal price of prevention. We examine the effect of the differential price change on the use of preventive procedures. We reveal evidence consistent with an important negative cross-price effect; that is, increases in the price of curative care can depress preventive care utilization.
Download or read book Essays on the State of Taxation of the Life Insurance Industry written by Marci K. Castillo and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Insurance and Taxation written by Florian Scheuer and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: .
Download or read book Essays in Taxation written by Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in fiscal economics written by Charles William De Seve and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Taxation written by Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (R. A.) and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 738 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays in Fiscal Economics written by Charles William De Seve and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on the Effects of Risk and Regulation on the Price of Term Life Insurance written by Patrick Ryan Cooper and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While life insurers are generally free to set prices on term life insurance contracts, they face three constraints in doing so. Two of these constraints, insurance premium taxes and insurance guaranty funds, are imposed by state governments, while the third, the insolvency risk premium of insurance contracts issued by a specific insurer, is imposed directly by the market. The first two essays estimate the effects of the two government-imposed constraints on the price of term life insurance. In essay one, we look at how guaranty funds affect the price of term life insurance. Guaranty funds, which exist in every state, reduce the cost of insurer insolvency to policyholders by paying out death benefits up to a specified amount, usually $300,000, on policies written by insurers that have become insolvent. We show theoretically, using an expected value model, and empirically, using data from the California term life insurance market, that the price per thousand dollars of coverage is significantly lower for policies with a face value above the amount guaranteed by the state guaranty fund. In essay two, we estimate the effects of state insurance premium taxes on the price of term life insurance. In estimating the effects of state-specific premium taxes on the price of term life insurance, we linearly bifurcate each state's premium tax into a domestic premium tax, which is paid by all life insurance companies, regardless of domicile, and a retaliatory tax, which is paid only by an insurer whose state of domicile has a premium tax greater than that of the state in which the policy is written. We find that a one percent increase in both the domestic premium tax and the retaliatory tax increase the price of term life insurance by less than one percent. Finally, in the third essay, we estimate the effect of an insurer's insolvency risk, as measured by A.M. Best Financial Strength Ratings, on the price of a term life insurance contract issued by that insurer. Insurance contracts sold by an insurer with a relatively lower rating should sell at a discount to policies written by firms with a higher rating. We find strong evidence that insurers with a relatively higher A.M. Best rating actually charge lower prices.
Download or read book Essays in Taxation written by Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman and published by Obscure Press. This book was released on 2008-11 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays in Taxation Originally written in 1905, this is a series of essays by Edwin Seligman, Professor of Political Economy and Finance at Columbia University.Contents Include The Development of Taxation, The General Property Tax, The Single Tax, Double Taxation, Inheritance Tax, Taxation of Corporations History, Principles amp Complications, Classifications of Public Revenues, Recent Reforms in Taxation, The Betterment Tax, European Literature on Taxation, American Reports of Taxation. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.Keywords: Tax Taxation Double Taxation Columbia University Inheritance Tax Edwin Seligman European Literature Single Tax Property Tax Public Revenues Betterment Political Economy 1900s Corporations Artwork
Download or read book Essays on Behavioral Responses to Social Insurance and Taxation written by Arthur Seibold and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Insurance Risk Management and Public Policy written by Sandra G. Gustavson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 1993-10-31 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Five years ago the world lost one of its most prolific insurance scholars, Dr. Robert I. Mehr. His death in 1988 signalled the passing of not only a gifted writer and researcher, but also a pioneering teacher, mentor, and friend. The essays compiled within this volume are intended as an appropriate tribute to this occasionally outrageous individual who touched the lives of so many within the insurance community. Bob Mehr was a teacher who expected and demanded nothing less than perfect scholarship and flawless, efficient writing. Among alumni of the University of lllinois insurance doctoral program, stories still abound of late night and early morning sessions in which students and professor painstakingly debated precise words and phrases for dissertations, journal articles, and textbooks. Bob's respect for language was both immense and contagious, if at times more than a little compulsive. He joked that he could not read letters or novels without pencil in hand for editing. Bob's respect for his doctoral students was equally evident. The confidence he displayed in his students' abilities was sometimes startling, but "competence assumed" often begot "competence in fact." The accomplishments and records amassed by the many who studied with Bob Mehr are impressive and ongoing. On the dedication page in his final textbook, Fundamentals of Insurance, Bob spoke of his affection for those he called his "academic progeny" and wished them happiness as they build their own academic families.
Download or read book Two Essays in Finance written by Ward R. Kangas and published by Universal-Publishers. This book was released on 1997-10 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on data on publicly traded insurance firms, the first essay examines questions about the effect of large catastrophic events on insurance firms. Rather than looking at a single event, thirty catastrophic events were aggregated into quintiles and the cumulative abnormal returns around these events were found to be significantly positive over a 25 day trading window. There is no significant evidence that post-catastrophic stock returns are correlated to the magnitude of the catastrophe. The second essay analyzes the effect of a large land grant university, the University of Illinois, on the State Treasury of Illinois. If the State Treasury were acting as its own agent trying to maximize revenues, would it choose higher education as an investment versus other alternative investments. While it is true the State makes large expenditures for the operations of the University, it is also true that individuals receiving degrees on average receive higher incomes. Taxes or higher incomes offset the cost of operating the University. The study is broken out by the level of student: undergraduate, masters, doctorate, medical professional, and by function of the University. It was found that all levels of education have a positive return not only for the individual, but also for the State Treasury. This is in excess of any non-pecuniary benefits to the State of having a better educated population, or the local taxation effects on the county or city where the campus is located. These returns are found to be higher than other types of investments.
Download or read book Essays on Interstate Competition in the Unemployment Insurance System written by and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Essays on Health and Social Insurance written by Michael Stepner (Ph.D.) and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of three chapters on the economics of health and social insurance. In the first chapter, I examine the distribution of income risk that adults face from severe illness and the social insurance provided by taxes and transfers using an event study research design with linked Canadian hospital and tax records. I find that adults with lower incomes face larger pre-tax earnings risk from hospitalization events, primarily due to extensive margin exits from employment. Canada’s tax and transfer system insures 44% of post-hospitalization income losses in the bottom income quintile and 12% of losses in the top income quintile. But less than two thirds of this insurance comes from replacing lost earnings with increased transfers. In the bottom income quintile, 30% of insurance is due to a stable stream of transfers; in the top income quintile, 30% of insurance is due to progressive taxation. Using a calibrated model, I find that the marginal value of additional insurance against hospitalization risk is approximately flat across the income distribution. In the second chapter, I show that employer-provided short-term disability insurance (STDI) increases long-term disability insurance (LTDI) take-up and imposes a negative fiscal externality on the government budget. Using variation in private STDI coverage caused by Canadian firms ending their plans, I find that private STDI raises two-year flows onto LTDI by 0.07 percentage points (33%). Extrapolating to Canada’s entire population, private STDI generated 18,300 LTDI recipients and CA$230 million dollars (5%) of public LTDI spending in 2015. In the third chapter, Raj Chetty, Sarah Abraham, Shelby Lin, Benjamin Scuderi, Nicholas Turner, Augustin Begeron, David Cutler and I examine the relationship between income and life expectancy in the United States from 2001 to 2014. Using 1.4 billion linked earnings and mortality records, we document the levels of life expectancy and changes in life expectancy over time by income group, at a national level and within local areas. We also examine the factors correlated with differences in life expectancy across local areas. JEL Classification: I38, H53, I14
Download or read book Three Essays on Insurance written by Reza Ghazal and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book ESSAYS ON THE U S PROPERTY CASUALTY INSURANCE INDUSTRY written by Yingrui Lu and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes two chapters. In Chapter 1, "Information Risk and the Cost of Equity Capital Revisited: Evidence from the U.S. Property-Casualty Insurance Industry", I revisit the relationship between information risk and the cost of equity capital in the U.S. property-casualty (P-C) insurance industry. Eckles, Halek and Zhang (2014) find that information risk has no effect on the cost of equity using a sample of U.S. P-C insurers. Following their approach, we decompose information risk into innate and discretionary components. I find that innate information risk affects the cost of equity capital through two opposing channels. On the one hand, innate information risk directly increases an insurer's cost of equity capital by increasing investors' assessment of the riskiness of the insurer's future cash flows. On the other hand, innate information risk indirectly decreases the insurer's cost of equity capital by changing its production so that the assessed riskiness of the firm's future cash flows are reduced. This (negative) indirect effect depends on factors that influence the insurer's underwriting decisions. My empirical results provide supporting evidence for a significant, positive direct effect of innate information risk, while the magnitude of the (negative) indirect effect increases with the insurer's proportion of long-tail business and decreases with its affiliated reinsurance usage. As to the impact of discretionary information risk, my results are mixed. I also find that, on average, the overall effect of information risk on the cost of equity capital for property-casualty insurers is significant and negative. In Chapter 2, "Coordination of Capital, Earnings, and Taxes in the U.S. Property-Casualty Insurance Industry", I investigate how property-casualty (P-C) insurers manage discretionary tools to achieve regulatory capital, earnings, and tax planning goals. I examine one accrual tool, loss reserve errors, together with two real transaction tools: realized capital gains (losses) from investment sales, and capital contributions. I find that when P-C insurers have lower pre-managed capital levels, managers will report income-increasing loss reserve errors, recognize more realized capital gains and receive more capital contributions. When P-C insurers have lower pre-managed earnings, managers will report income-increasing loss reserve errors. When P-C insurers have higher marginal tax rates, managers will report income-decreasing loss reserve errors and recognize more realized capital losses. Moreover, I analyze the effect of ownership structures on the degree of managerial discretion for various reporting goals. My analysis includes three different types of ownership structures: public, private stock and mutual firms. I find that, through the use of capital contributions, public firms are more aggressive in capital management, while mutual firms are less aggressive in capital management than private stock firms. In terms of using the other two tools, compared to private stock firms, public firms do not manage capital less aggressively; they do not manage earnings more aggressively; they do not manage taxes less aggressively. Compared to private stock firms, mutual firms are less aggressive in capital management; they are more aggressive in earnings management; they are less aggressive in tax management.
