Data and code for "The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment"

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Richard Domurat, UCLA; Isaac Menashe, Covered California; Wesley Yin, UCLA

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
code			02/21/2021 02:13:AM
data			02/21/2021 02:14:AM
dictionaries			02/21/2021 02:14:AM
results			02/21/2021 02:14:AM
AER_2019_0823_ReadMe.txt	text/plain	26.2 KB	02/20/2021 09:13:PM

Project Citation:

Domurat, Richard, Menashe, Isaac , and Yin, Wesley. Data and code for “The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment.” Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2021. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2021-04-09. https://doi.org/10.3886/E125801V1

Project Description

Summary:

We experimentally varied information mailed to 87,000 households in California's health insurance marketplace to study the role of frictions in insurance take-up. Reminders about the enrollment deadline raised enrollment by 1.3 pp (16 percent) in this typically low take-up population. Heterogeneous effects of personalized subsidy information indicate misperceptions about program benefits. Consistent with an adverse selection model with frictional enrollment costs, the intervention lowered average spending risk by 5.1 percent, implying that marginal respondents were 37 percent less costly than inframarginal consumers. We observe the largest positive selection among low income consumers, who exhibit the largest frictions in enrollment. Finally, we estimate the implied value of the letter intervention to be $25 to $53 per month in subsidy dollars. These results suggest that frictions may partially explain low take-up for marketplace insurance, and that interventions reducing them can improve enrollment and market risk in exchanges. The attached code and data replicates results reported in this study.

Funding Sources: Jameel Poverty Action Lab Health Care Delivery Initiative

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: Randomized Control Trial; Health Insurance; Risk Selection; Behavioral Frictions

JEL Classification:
      D90 Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General
      I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
      I13 Health Insurance, Public and Private

Geographic Coverage: California

Time Period(s): 2015 – 2016

Universe: The universe of data come from subjects of the Open Enrollment RCT conducted in December 2015 through January 2016. The RCT sample was drawn from the population of people in the Covered California "Funnel," denoting people who had begun the enrollment process, or had been referred to Covered California from the county systems, but had not yet enrolled in a marketplace place.

Data Type(s): administrative records data; experimental data

Methodology

Response Rate: Data are from administrative sources, so the data includes information on all RCT study subjects.

Sampling:

We began with the set of households in the Funnel who were deemed eligible for the study at the time of treatment assignment. For budgetary reasons, we reduced the total sample to 126,182 randomly selected households from the full Funnel to be in the study. We then excluded individuals who did not have valid addresses, ages, or other eligibility attributes. The final sample size after applying these exclusions was 87,394 households.

Data Source: Data come from Covered California administrative records. Supplemental data come from the American Community Survey.

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2021-04-09]

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.