Optimal Social Insurance with Linear Income Taxation*

We study optimal social insurance aimed at insuring disability risk in the presence of linear income taxation. Optimal disability insurance benefits rise with previous earnings. Optimal insurance is incomplete even though disability risks are exogenous and verifiable so that moral hazard in disability insurance is absent. Imperfect insurance is optimal because it encourages workers to insure themselves against disability by working and saving more, thereby alleviating the distortionary impact of the redistributive income tax on labor supply and savings.     

中国社会医疗保险道德风险刍议

中国社会医疗保险是由国家立法实行的一种非盈利性社会事业,关系到人们的生活健康、人力资源的保护增值与社会经济的有序发展,其要义不言而喻。然而,由于现行的医疗保险体制运行中的种种缺陷而引致的医保欺诈现象愈演愈烈,不仅给国家财政带来巨大负担,还给整个社会带来严重的信用危机。因此,医保道德风险的防范与控制已经刻不容缓。     

Good Jobs,Bad Jobs and Redistribution*

We analyse the question of optimal taxation in a dual economy, when the policy‐maker is concerned about the distribution of labour income. Income inequality is caused by the presence of sunk capital investments, which creates a “good jobs” sector due to the capture of quasi‐rents by trade unions. With strong unions and high planner preference for income equality, the optimal policy is a combination of investment subsidies and progressive income taxation. If unions are weaker, the policy‐maker may instead choose to tax investment.     

Optimal Social Insurance with Endogenous Health*

In this paper, I analyze optimal insurance against unemployment and disability in a private information economy with endogenous health and search effort. Individuals can reduce the probability of becoming disabled by exerting prevention effort. I show that the optimal sequence of consumption is increasing for a working individual and constant for a disabled individual. During unemployment, decreasing benefits are not necessarily optimal. The prevention constraint implies increasing benefits while the search constraint demands decreasing benefits while being unemployed. However, if individuals respond sufficiently to search incentives, the latter effect dominates the former and the optimal consumption sequence is decreasing during unemployment.     

Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Procurement Contracting

A model of procurement contracting is developed and tested in laboratory experiments. Market performance results are presented for both fixed-price and cost-sharing contracts. Contracts are awarded with first-price sealed-bid or second-price sealed-bid auctions. The environment contains post-auction cost uncertainty and opportunity for unmonitored effort in contract cost reduction. Cost-sharing contracts are found to reduce procurement expense but also to be inefficient because of their induced moral hazard waste and cost overruns.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C72, C92, D44, D61, D82, H57, L14.     

商业医疗保险中的道德风险防范与控制

道德风险在各种保险市场都存在,但在医疗保险市场却复杂得多。道德风险使医疗费用快速不合理地增长,过度消耗有限资源,给社会造成了极大的浪费,同时还恶化了医患关系,降低了社会诚信水平。分析了我公司9 876例案件中出现的道德风险及采取的防范措施。     

Social Insurance with In-kind Provision of Private Goods

This paper addresses the desirability of providing in-kind transfers as a screening device to facilitate redistribution of income from able to disabled persons within a social insurance system. An optimal policy—consisting of cash transfers, income-contingent in-kind transfers of one good particularly demanded by disabled workers, and linear taxation of other commodities—is characterized. It is then asked whether and, if so, when this policy can be replaced by an "earning-tested scheme" that provides the in-kind good only to those indivi duals who have no earnings from labor or by a non-linear pricing policy.     

道德风险存在下董事责任保险市场的保费水平分析

本文通过对董事责任保险市场的介绍,指出在董事责任保险市场中存在着严重的道德风险问题,通过对市场中保险双方行为的博弈分析,得到在道德风险存在下的保费变动范围,并指出防止或减轻董事责任保险市场中道德风险的方法.     

中国社会养老保险适度支出水平研究

文章采用历年相关统计数据资料并构建计量模型,就2014年至2040年我国社会养老保险的适度支出水平和当前我国社会养老保险的实际支出水平进行了测算和分析。分析结果表明：当前我国社会养老保险的总体实际支出水平低于适度支出水平,但由于在不同人群采用不同的社会养老保险制度,机关事业单位社会养老保险的实际支出水平很高,城镇企业职工社会养老保险的实际支出水平较为适宜,城乡居民社会养老保险实际支出水平极低。鉴于当前我国针对不同人群实施不同的社会养老保险制度且不同社会养老保险制度待遇标准差异较大,文章以企业职工养老保险的“社会统筹+个人账户”模式为基础就建立全国统一的社会养老保险提出了相应对策建议,以利于我国社会养老保险的可持续发展。     

道德风险与存款保险额度的市场决定

中国建成何种存款保险制度模式将直接影响到银行行为和金融稳定。存款保险具有诱发银行从事更高风险经营的制度激励。为此,实践中许多经济体对存款保额人为设定上限。但总体上不是降低而是加大了银行体系的不稳定性。而保额如果由市场内生决定,则能够摆脱人为确定保额的困境。在金融业相对稳定的背景下,中国存款保险制度建设应该发挥后发优势,利用市场决定保额以尽量增加市场约束力。而且操作上也较为简单易行,并可与其他金融改革和制度建设互动进行。     

Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: A Classroom Experiment

Adverse selection as it relates to health care policy will be a key economic issue in many upcoming elections. In this article, the author lays out a 30-minute classroom experiment designed for students to experience the kind of elevated prices and market collapse that can result from adverse selection in health insurance markets. The students should come away from the experiment understanding why adverse selection leads to high prices on good quality insurance and why it forces healthy individuals into low quality plans. Additionally, the experiment helps students think about the market characteristics that make health insurance particularly vulnerable to problems of asymmetric information. Finally, the experiment connects the adverse selection problem with key features of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.     

Health,Social Insurance and Income

Health, a form of human capital, can be defined by longevity and physical wellbeing. Social policy decisions require an understanding of the factors that contribute to the creation of health inequalities. To learn more about socioeconomic variables and health capital, this paper examines the relationship between three key variables: health, social insurance, and income, for the Swedish population. Using a randomized research survey design, data from 3,600 participants of a larger Swedish study, conducted in 2005, was analyzed. A linear model of Three Stage Least Squares was chosen to correct for simultaneous bias in the Health, Social Insurance, and Income (HSI) Model. Findings confirm the importance of socioeconomic, behavioral and environmental factors in explaining health inequalities. The results clearly show men, educated people, nonsmokers, individuals that exercise and youngsters possess higher health status than other people. The dependency on social insurance is mainly caused by poor health; a higher degree of social insurance dependency was offset by income increases due to age and higher professional level.      

医疗保险市场道德风险防范初探

商业医疗保险的市场潜力巨大，但发展缓慢。医疗保险的风险控制能力，特别是对医疗保险市场上道德风险的控制，决定了保险公司发展商业医疗保险的意愿，是医疗保险的核心问题。我国医疗保险市场上的道德风险既有普遍性，又有特殊性，其后果是医疗费用的膨胀和保险公司经营困难。保险企业应该对来自投保人和医疗机构的道德风险采取不同的措施进行控制，以发展我国的医疗保险事业。     

Moral Hazard,Income Taxation and Prospect Theory*

The standard theory of optimal income taxation under uncertainty has been developed under the assumption that individuals maximise expected utility. However, prospect theory has now been established as an alternative model of individual behaviour, with empirical support. This paper explores the theory of optimal income taxation under uncertainty when individuals behave according to the tenets of prospect theory. It is seen that many of the standard results are modified in interesting ways. The first‐order approach for solving the optimisation problem is not valid over the domain of losses, and the marginal tax schedule offers full insurance around the reference consumption level. The implications of non‐welfarist objectives under income uncertainty are also examined.     

Ethnic Diversity,Civil War and Redistribution*

In a game‐theoretic framework, we analyse the circumstances under which self‐enforcing redistribution and power‐sharing coalitions can be used to peacefully resolve ethnic conflict. The existence of a pacific equilibrium depends crucially on ethnic diversity (the number of ethnic groups). The risk of civil war is comparatively high at intermediate levels of ethnic diversity. The risk is low if a society is either very homogeneous or very diverse. Predictions of the model are consistent with evidence on the incidence of civil war.     

Optimal Workfare with Voluntary and Involuntary Unemployment*

This paper addresses the welfare implications of introducing workfare into unemployment benefit policy. We consider a population composed of employed and unemployed workers and of individuals who do not seek employment. Job search behavior is unobservable, which means that voluntarily unemployed individuals can claim unemployment insurance (UI) benefits intended for unemployed workers. As a consequence, pecuniary benefit schemes underinsure workers against unemployment. We show that requiring unproductive activities (workfare) in exchange for UI benefits may generate a Pareto improvement by facilitating better unemployment insurance for workers, and we characterize the situations where this is the case.     

Optimal Redistribution with Productive Social Services

Publicly‐provided private goods are conventionally considered consumer goods. Departing from this perspective, we analyze the public provision of inputs that improve household productivity (e.g., education and childcare). In a two‐class economy with distorting taxation, public provision is always welfare improving with respect to pure taxation, given that the public input directly affects household productivity. Moreover, the case for public provision strengthens as households' heterogeneity in input demand fades out, contrary to consolidated results in the literature. The features of optimal provision schemes depend on the nature of publicly provided input, namely, if it substitutes household productive capacity or just helps households to exploit it.     

Conflict and the Social Contract*

We consider social contracts for resolving conflicts between two agents who are uncertain about each other's fighting potential. Applications include international conflict, litigation and elections. Even though only a peaceful agreement avoids a loss of resources, if this loss is small enough, then any contract must assign a positive probability of conflict. We show how the likelihood of conflict outbreak depends on the distribution of power between the agents and their information about each other.     

社会保险道德风险的发生机制及防治

社会保险制度是社会保障制度最重要的组成部分,对于实现社会保障制度的功能起着重要作用。道德风险对于社会保险发挥其正常功能具有显著的消极影响。本文针对国内外社会保险制度实施中存在的形形色色的道德风险,探讨了社会保险道德风险产生的条件和特点,分析了社会保险道德风险产生的原因,提出防治社会保险道德风险的思路和对策。     

Does Work Always Pay in Germany?

Abstract. Income redistribution in Germany is the result of a combination of several redistribution instruments: there is a complex income tax law, different obligatory social insurances and supplementary benefits. This paper estimates income redistribution by quantile regression, using German EVS data. Two results are obtained: income after redistribution does not always increase in line with income before redistribution, i.e. for people with a low income before redistribution, it does not make sense to increase their efforts, since more work means less earnings. Further, an increasing redistribution rate for higher incomes is not always observable from the data.