[go: up one dir, main page]

IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejmac/v13y2013i1p151-186n20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Households’ uncertainty about Medicare policy

Author

Listed:
  • Michelangeli Valentina

    (Bank of Italy, Via Nazionale, 91, 00184 Roma, Italy)

  • Santoro Marika

    (International Monetary Fund, 700 19th Street N.W., Washington DC 20431)

Abstract
Interest in the implications of policy uncertainty has been recently growing, as policy uncertainty increases during recession episodes. In this paper, we study how households behave when they are uncertain about future Medicare policies. Medicare represents the main form of insurance against medical expenditure risk for older Americans. However, the challenge raised by the Medicare budget increases households’ awareness of possible future Medicare reforms. Households are uncertain about the types and timing of those reforms. To analyze the effects of that policy uncertainty, we build a life-cycle model where households face several risks. Based on reasonable assumptions about policy uncertainty, we find that, due to that uncertainty, households mainly increase savings, with older households saving up to 3.5% more in the short run. The average welfare loss is about $10,000 in wealth-equivalent, with the largest losses concentrated among older households.

Suggested Citation

  • Michelangeli Valentina & Santoro Marika, 2013. "Households’ uncertainty about Medicare policy," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 151-186, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:151-186:n:20
    DOI: 10.1515/bejm-2012-0120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bejm-2012-0120
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bejm-2012-0120?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher D. Carroll, 1997. "Buffer-Stock Saving and the Life Cycle/Permanent Income Hypothesis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 1-55.
    2. Kjetil Storesletten & Chris Telmer & Amir Yaron, 2007. "Asset Pricing with Idiosyncratic Risk and Overlapping Generations," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(4), pages 519-548, October.
    3. Nicholas Bloom & Max Floetotto & Nir Jaimovich & Itay Saporta†Eksten & Stephen J. Terry, 2018. "Really Uncertain Business Cycles," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 86(3), pages 1031-1065, May.
    4. Mr. Christopher Carroll & Mr. Martin Sommer & Mr. Jiri Slacalek, 2012. "Dissecting Saving Dynamics: Measuring Wealth, Precautionary, and Credit Effects," IMF Working Papers 2012/219, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Hans Fehr & Sabine Jokisch & Laurence J Kotlikoff, 2006. "Will China Eat Our Lunch or Take Us to Dinner? Simulating the Transition Paths of the US, EU, Japan and China," RBA Annual Conference Volume (Discontinued), in: Christopher Kent & Anna Park & Daniel Rees (ed.),Demography and Financial Markets, Reserve Bank of Australia.
    6. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John B. Jones, 2010. "Why Do the Elderly Save? The Role of Medical Expenses," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 39-75, February.
    7. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 43288, Congressional Budget Office.
    8. Tauchen, George, 1986. "Finite state markov-chain approximations to univariate and vector autoregressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-181.
    9. Michael G. Palumbo, 1999. "Uncertain Medical Expenses and Precautionary Saving Near the End of the Life Cycle," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(2), pages 395-421.
    10. Joao F. Cocco, 2005. "Consumption and Portfolio Choice over the Life Cycle," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(2), pages 491-533.
    11. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 43288, Congressional Budget Office.
    12. Shinichi Nishiyama & Kent Smetters, 2007. "Does Social Security Privatization Produce Efficiency Gains?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1677-1719.
    13. Christopher D. Carroll, 1992. "The Buffer-Stock Theory of Saving: Some Macroeconomic Evidence," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 23(2), pages 61-156.
    14. Alm, James, 1988. "Uncertain Tax Policies, Individual Behavior, and Welfare," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 78(1), pages 237-245, March.
    15. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2011," Reports 21252, Congressional Budget Office.
    16. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 43288, Congressional Budget Office.
    17. Congressional Budget Office, 2010. "An Analysis of the President's Budgetary Proposals for Fiscal Year 2011," Reports 21252, Congressional Budget Office.
    18. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    19. Dotsey, Michael, 1990. "The Economic Effects of Production Taxes in a Stochastic Growth Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(5), pages 1168-1182, December.
    20. Congressional Budget Office, 2012. "The 2012 Long-Term Budget Outlook," Reports 43288, Congressional Budget Office.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Erin Cottle Hunt & Frank N. Caliendo, 2024. "Dynamic Optimization with Timing Risk," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-18, August.
    2. Caliendo, Frank N. & Gorry, Aspen & Slavov, Sita, 2019. "The cost of uncertainty about the timing of Social Security reform," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 101-125.
    3. Jaeger Nelson, 2020. "Welfare Implications of Uncertain Social Security Reform," Public Finance Review, , vol. 48(4), pages 425-466, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krueger, D. & Mitman, K. & Perri, F., 2016. "Macroeconomics and Household Heterogeneity," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 843-921, Elsevier.
    2. Reona Hagiwara, 2022. "Welfare Effects of Health Insurance Reform: The Role of Elastic Medical Demand," IMES Discussion Paper Series 22-E-05, Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies, Bank of Japan.
    3. Shinichi Nishiyama, 2013. "Fiscal Policy Effects in a Heterogeneous-Agent Overlapping-Generations Economy With an Aging Population: Working Paper 2013-07," Working Papers 44941, Congressional Budget Office.
    4. Jonathan A. Schwabish & Julie H. Topoleski, 2013. "Modeling Individual Earnings in CBO’s Long-Term Microsimulation Model: Working Paper 2013-04," Working Papers 44306, Congressional Budget Office.
    5. Zhou, Jie, 2009. "The asset location puzzle: Taxes matter," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 955-969, April.
    6. Michael Haliassos & Alexander Michaelides, 2003. "Portfolio Choice and Liquidity Constraints," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(1), pages 143-177, February.
    7. Mariacristina De Nardi & Eric French & John Bailey Jones & Rory McGee, 2021. "Why Do Couples and Singles Save During Retirement?," Richmond Fed Economic Brief, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, vol. 21(09), pages 1-65, May.
    8. Juergen Jung & Chung Tran, 2016. "Market Inefficiency, Insurance Mandate and Welfare: U.S. Health Care Reform 2010," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 20, pages 132-159, April.
    9. Antoine Bommier & Daniel Harenberg & François Le Grand & Cormac O'Dea, 2020. "Recursive Preferences, the Value of Life, and Household Finance," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2231, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    10. Eric French & John Bailey Jones, 2011. "The Effects of Health Insurance and Self‐Insurance on Retirement Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(3), pages 693-732, May.
    11. Jung, Juergen & Tran, Chung & Chambers, Matthew, 2017. "Aging and health financing in the U.S.: A general equilibrium analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 428-462.
    12. de Bresser, Jochem, 2021. "Evaluating the Accuracy of Counterfactuals The Role of Heterogeneous Expectations in Life Cycle Models," Other publications TiSEM a7e2b4d8-fed0-4e86-926f-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    13. Kazumasa Oguro, 2014. "Challenges confronting Abenomics and Japanese public finance ?Fiscal consolidation must start by squarely facing reality?," Public Policy Review, Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, vol. 10(2), pages 301-318, August.
    14. Juergen Jung & Chung Tran, 2023. "Health Risk, Insurance, and Optimal Progressive Income Taxation," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(5), pages 2043-2097.
    15. de Bresser, Jochem, 2021. "Evaluating the Accuracy of Counterfactuals The Role of Heterogeneous Expectations in Life Cycle Models," Discussion Paper 2021-034, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Corina Boar, 2017. "Dynastic Precautionary Savings," 2017 Meeting Papers 343, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    17. Thomas Grennes, 2013. "Diminishing Quality of Fiscal Institutions in the United States and European Union," Cato Journal, Cato Journal, Cato Institute, vol. 33(1), pages 91-109, Winter.
    18. Nora Traum & Shu‐Chun S. Yang, 2015. "When Does Government Debt Crowd Out Investment?," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 24-45, January.
    19. Hans B. Christensen & Eric Floyd & Mark Maffett, 2020. "The Only Prescription Is Transparency: The Effect of Charge-Price-Transparency Regulation on Healthcare Prices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(7), pages 2861-2882, July.
    20. Jeffrey B. Liebman, 2013. "The Deterioration in the US Fiscal Outlook, 2001-2010," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 27(1), pages 1-18.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    health risk; policy uncertainty; precautionary savings; JEL Classification: E21; H31; I13;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E21 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Consumption; Saving; Wealth
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bejmac:v:13:y:2013:i:1:p:151-186:n:20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.