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Labor Economics I 14.472: Public Finance II: MIT Fall 2020 Instructor: Amy Finkestein ([email protected]) Teaching assistant: Jonathan Cohen ([email protected]) Lectures: Monday/Wednesday, 2:30 pm-4:00pm, virtual Recitation: Friday, 12-1, location TBD Course description: The course focuses on government expenditures, specifically social insurance, and redistributive programs. Key topics include theoretical and empirical analysis of insurance market failures, the optimal design of social insurance programs, and the optimal design of redistributive programs. The department offers two graduate public finance courses: 14.471 (Public Finance I) and 14.472 (Public Finance II). Broadly speaking, 471 focuses on taxation while 472 focuses on expenditures. They may be taken in either order. Students who want to have public finance as a major field must take both 14.471 and 14.472. The course pre-requisites include the MIT first year graduate micro sequence (previously or in parallel) or equivalent coursework. Course requirements: 1. Written response papers: There will be 10-12 short written response papers due at 9 am on the day of each lecture. These written response papers should be 1-2 pages and briefly summarize the paper’s contributions as well as identify any flaws in the paper or questions that you may have. You are encouraged to think constructively, such as proposing additional data or tests that could address your concerns or alternative settings in which the methodology could be applied. These written responses count for 15% of the grade. 2. Required readings: To try to improve class discussion / facilitate participation in the on- line forum, there will often be additional required readings to complete prior to class. You will need to upload one paragraph (graded for completion only) by 1pm of the day of the class on a reading required for that class. The paragraph should identify a portion of the paper you had difficulty understanding along with your current interpretation of it. This will be 5% of the grade. 3. Problem Sets: There will be one problem set that counts for 10% of the grade. 4. Research proposal: There will be one assignment to pose a question motivated by the class and to design a randomized evaluation that could answer it. This will count for 20% of the grade. 5. Class participation: Active class participation is key for a successful learning experience. It will also count for 10% of the grade. 6. Final Exam: There will be a closed book 3 hour exam during finals week which will cover the entire course material and be worth 40% of the grade. Zoom norms: Teaching (and learning) on Zoom is challenging, and we are all on the relatively steep part of the learning curve. I very much want this class to be informative, interesting and engaging, and I welcome any/all real-time suggestions for how to improve the experience. As a start, please observe the following norms for lecture: 1. Camera on 2. Mute upon entry and when not speaking 3. Raise hand to speak or feel free to interrupt at any point 4. You will not be able to privately message other people except for Jon 5. It is difficult to stay engaged with a video, so please don't be shy about interacting with questions and comments! Your classmates (and I!) will all appreciate it. Course scheduling: • There will be no lecture Monday September 28 (Yom Kippur) but there will instead be a lecture during section on Friday October 2 (12-1). • Dmitry Taubinsky (visiting from UC Berkeley) will give two guest lectures on behavioral public finance (currently scheduled for October 19 and 21) 14.472 Home Page: There is a 14.472 site (https://canvas.mit.edu/courses/3464) on Canvas. Links for all of the required readings are included on the course website. All assignments should be submitted under the “Assignments” tab. Zoom links for lectures and recitations will be posted here. The Canvas page also links to Piazza (https://piazza.com/mit/fall2020/14472), which will be used for class discussion. Feel free to post questions on class materials, readings, or general research topics. Jon will respond, though you are highly encouraged to interact with classmates on the forum. Readings: Students are required to read the papers in bold before class. This is essential for the classroom lecture and discussion to be effective. Readings in italics are highly recommended for all students, especially those planning to have public finance as a major field. Office Hours: By appointment. Useful introductory / background texts: J. Gruber, Public Finance and Public Policy, 5th edition (New York: Worth Publishers, 2016) relevant chapters are 12-17 – We have posted these on the course web site. Moffitt, Robert (ed). 2016. “Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume II.” University of Chicago Press. PART I: SOCIAL INSURANCE I. Introduction: Why Have Social Insurance? 2 P. Diamond, “Social Security” Presidential Address to the AEA annual meetings, January 2004, American Economic Review, March 2004. M. Feldstein, “Rethinking Social Insurance” Presidential Address to the AEA annual meetings, January 2005, American Economic Review, March 2005. II. Empirical analysis of asymmetric information in insurance markets IIa. Theory_: Adverse Selection and Moral Hazard Azevedo Eduardo and Daniel Gottlieb. 2017. “Perfect Competition in Markets with Adverse Selection”. Econometrica 85(1): 67-105. Einav, Liran and Amy Finkelstein. 2011. “Selection in Insurance Markets: Theory and Empirics in Pictures.” Journal of Economic Perspectives (Vol 25 (1): 115-138). M. Rothschild and J. Stiglitz, “Equilibrium in Competitive Insurance Markets: An Essay on the Economics of Imperfect Information.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 90(4), November 1976: 629-650. II.b Detecting asymmetric information Cawley, John and Tomas Philipson. “An empirical examination of information barriers to trade in insurance.” American Economic Review, 1999, 89 (4), pp.827-846. Cardon, James H. and Igal Hendel. “Asymmetric Information in Health Insurance: Evidence from the National Medical Expenditure Survey.” RAND Journal of Economics, 2001, 32 (3), pp. 408-427. Cutler, David M., Amy Finkelstein, and Kathleen McGarry (2008), "Preference Heterogeneity and Insurance Markets: Explaining a Puzzle of Insurance," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings 98(2): 157-162. D. Cutler and S. Reber, “Paying for Health Insurance: The Trade-off Between Competition and Adverse Selection,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113(2), May 1998, pp.433-466. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre. 2000. Econometric Models of Insurance under Asymmetric Information. In Georges Dionne, ed. Handbook of Insurance Economics. London: Kluwer. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre and Bernard Salanie. “Testing for Asymmetric Information in Insurance Markets.” Journal of Political Economy, 2000, 108 (1), pp. 56-78. Finkelstein, Amy and Kathleen McGarry. 2006. “Multiple Dimensions of Private Information: Evidence from the Long-Term Care Insurance Market.” American Economic Review September, 938 – 958. Finkelstein, Amy and James Poterba. “Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets: Policyholder Evidence from the U.K. Annuity Market.” Journal of Political Economy, 2004, 112(1), pp. 193-208. 3 Finkelstein, Amy and James Poterba. "Testing for Adverse Selection with ‘Unused Observables’.” Journal of Risk and Insurance, December 2014, Vol 81 (4): 709-734. Fang, Hanming, Michael Keane, and Dan Silverman (2008), "Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy 116(2): 303-350. He, Daifeng. 2009. “The Life Insurance Market: Asymmetric Information Revisited,” Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 93: 1090-1097 Karlan, Dean and Jonathan Zinman. 2009. “Observing Unobservables: Identifying Information Asymmetries with a Consumer Credit Field Experiment,” Econometrica, Vol. 77, No. 6: 1993–2008 Landais, Camille, Arash Neoei, Peter Nilsson, David Seim and Johannes Spinnewijn. 2017. “Risk-based Selection in Unemployment Insurance: Evidence and Implications.” http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/clandais/cgi-bin/Articles/selectionUI.pdf Panhans, Matthew. 2019. “Adverse Selection in ACA Exchange Markets: Evidence from Colorado.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics. April. Volume 11 (2): 1-36. Shepard, Mark. 2016. “Hospital Network Competition and Adverse Selection: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange.” NBER Working Paper 22600. Wagner, Katherine. 2020. “Adaptation and Adverse selection in Markets for Natural Disaster Insurance.” https://www.krhwagner.com/papers/Adaptation%20and%20Adverse%20Selection%20in%20 Markets%20for%20Natural%20Disaster%20Insurance%20-%20Katherine%20Wagner.pdf II.c Welfare consequences of asymmetric information Bundorf, Kate M., Jonathan Levin, and Neale Mahoney, 2012, "Pricing, Matching and Efficiency in Health Plan Choice," American Economic Review 102(7): 3214-3248 Cabral, Marika, Can Cui, and Michael Dworsky. 2019. “What is the Rationale for an Insurance Coverage Mandate? Evidence from Worker’s Compensation Insurance.” NBER Working Paper 26103. http://www.marikacabral.com/CabralCuiDworsky_WorkersComp.pdf Chetty, Raj. 2009. “Sufficient Statistics for Welfare Analysis: A Bridge Between Structural and Reduced-Form Methods.” Annual Review of Economics 1: 451-488. Cohen, Alma and Liran Einav. 2007. “Estimating Risk Preferences from Deductible Choice” American Economic Review. June: 745-788 Einav, Liran, Amy Finkelstien and Jonathan Levin. 2010. “Beyond Testing: Empirical Models of Insurance Markets”. Annual Review
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