title: Hips and hearts: the variation in incentive effects of insurance across hospital procedures.
abstract: The separate identification of effects due to incentives, selection and preference heterogeneity in insurance markets is the topic of much debate. In this paper, we investigate the presence and variation in moral hazard across health care procedures. The key motivating hypothesis is the expectation of larger causal effects in the case of more discretionary procedures. The empirical approach relies on an extremely rich and extensive dataset constructed by linking survey data to administrative data for hospital medical records. Using this approach we are able to provide credible evidence of large moral hazard effects but for elective surgeries only.
authors: School of Economics, University of New South Wales, Australia.
authors: Denise
authors: D
authors: Doiron
authors: School of Economics, University of New South Wales, Australia.
authors: Denzil G
authors: DG
authors: Fiebig
authors: School of Economics, University of New South Wales, Australia. Electronic address: agne.suziedelyte@monash.edu.
authors: Agne
authors: A
authors: Suziedelyte
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D001315:Australia; D017558:Elective Surgical Procedures / Q000191:economics*; D005260:Female; D005102:Health Expenditures / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health / Q000191:economics*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011787:Quality of Health Care / Q000191:economics*; D012052:Reimbursement, Incentive / Q000191:economics*; D014850:Waiting Lists
keywords: Asymmetric information; Health insurance; Moral hazard