Is the difficulty of purchasing health insurance as an individual or small business a major barrier to entrepreneurship in the United States? I answer this question by taking advantage of the natural experiment provided by the Affordable Care Act’s dependent coverage mandate, which allowed...

We present and empirically implement an equilibrium labor market search model where risk averse workers facing medical expenditure shocks are matched with firms making health insurance coverage decisions. Our model delivers a rich set of predictions that can account for a wide variety of...

In exchange for tax exemptions, Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) health insurers were expected to provide health insurance to the "bad risks," those for whom coverage was unavailable from other insurers. I present evidence that five years after a BCBS plan converted to for-profit status, the...

In this study, I examine the effects of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion on the labor supply decisions of non-disabled, low-educated, childless adults ages 50-64. I employ a triple-differences (DDD) methodology, exploiting variation in individuals’ health insurance status and the...

Low insurance take-up in low-income populations is not easily explained by the standard single-period expected utility model of insurance that overlooks the relevance of time preference when liquidity is constrained. We design field survey instruments to elicit quasi-hyperbolic time preferences,...

In the United States, most labor force participants have health insurance plans sponsored and subsidized by their employers. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) improved and expanded the availability of non-employer-based health insurance, with protections for pre-existing conditions, guaranteed...

We present and empirically implement an equilibrium labor market search model where risk averse workers facing medical expenditure shocks are matched with firms making health insurance coverage decisions. Our model delivers a rich set of predictions that can account for a wide variety of...

The primary goal of the federal dependent coverage mandate was to increase health insurance coverage among young adults, the group with the lowest prevalence of health insurance coverage. To understand the full impacts of the federal dependent coverage mandate, it is important to evaluate how...

A majority of married couples in the United States take advantage of the fact that employers often provide health insurance coverage to spouses. When the older spouses become eligible for Medicare, however, many of them can no longer provide their younger spouses with coverage. In this paper, we...

This paper investigates the short-run impact of public insurance expansion under the Affordable Care Act on out-of-pocket medical spending (OOP) and risk exposure among low-income, eligible households as well as the incidence of the cost of providing insurance. Using data from the Medical...