| 来源类型 | Working Paper |
| 规范类型 | 报告 |
| DOI | 10.3386/w19527 |
| 来源ID | Working Paper 19527 |
| How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange | |
| Keith M. Marzilli Ericson; Amanda Starc | |
| 发表日期 | 2013-10-10 |
| 出版年 | 2013 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | Standardization of complex products is touted as improving consumer decisions and intensifying price competition, but evidence on standardization is limited. We examine a natural experiment: the standardization of health insurance plans on the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange. Pre-standardization, firms had wide latitude to design plans. A regulatory change then required firms to standardize the cost-sharing parameters of plans and offer seven defined options; plans remained differentiated on network, brand, and price. Standardization led consumers on the HIX to choose more generous health insurance plans and led to substantial shifts in brands' market shares. We decompose the sources of this shift into three effects: price, product availability, and valuation. A discrete choice model shows that standardization changed the weights consumers attach to plan attributes (a valuation effect), increasing the salience of tier. The availability effect explains the bulk of the brand shifts. Standardization increased consumer welfare in our models, but firms captured some of the surplus by reoptimizing premiums. We use hypothetical choice experiments to replicate the effect of standardization and conduct alternative counterfactuals. |
| 主题 | Microeconomics ; Households and Firms ; Economics of Information ; Public Economics ; Taxation ; Health, Education, and Welfare ; Health ; Industrial Organization ; Market Structure and Firm Performance |
| URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w19527 |
| 来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
| 引用统计 | |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/577200 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Keith M. Marzilli Ericson,Amanda Starc. How Product Standardization Affects Choice: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange. 2013. |
| 条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 | |||||
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