Data and Code for: Price-Linked Subsidies and Imperfect Competition in Health Insurance

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Mark Shepard, Harvard University. Kennedy School of Government.; Sonia Jaffe, Microsoft

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
Data			11/08/2019 11:09:AM
Graphs			11/08/2019 11:10:AM
Scripts			12/17/2019 10:27:AM
Tables			11/08/2019 11:11:AM
README.txt	text/plain	16.3 KB	12/17/2019 05:32:AM

Project Citation:

Shepard, Mark, and Jaffe, Sonia. Data and Code for: Price-Linked Subsidies and Imperfect Competition in Health Insurance. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2020. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2020-07-23. https://doi.org/10.3886/E115405V1

Project Description

Summary:

Policymakers subsidizing health insurance often face uncertainty about future market prices. We study the implications of one policy response: linking subsidies to prices, to target a given post-subsidy premium. We show that these price-linked subsidies weaken competition, raising prices for the government and/or consumers. However, price-linking also ties subsidies to health care cost shocks, which may be desirable. Evaluating this tradeoff empirically, using a model estimated with Massachusetts insurance exchange data, we find that price-linking increases prices 1-6%, and much more

in less competitive markets. For cost uncertainty reasonable in a mature market, these losses outweigh the benefits of price-linking.

Funding Sources: Harvard University; United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Aging (T32-AG000186); National Science Foundation (Graduate Research Fellowship)

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: health insurance; competition; subsidy

JEL Classification:
I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
I13 Health Insurance, Public and Private

Geographic Coverage: Massachusetts, USA

Time Period(s): 2007 – 2011

Data Type(s): census/enumeration data; program source code

Methodology

Data Source: Public data: Census (ACS)
Restricted data: Massachusetts Health Connector

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2020-07-23]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as received from the data depositor. As of April 2026, depositors are required to submit study materials in accessible formats. ICPSR has not reviewed, checked, or processed this material. For additional information about the study, please contact the investigator(s) directly. If you have questions about the accessibility of materials distributed by ICPSR or require further assistance, please visit ICPSR's Accessibility Center.