On Monday, December 16 2019, 14:00 - 15:30, Stefan Pichler (ETH Zurich) will present:
Measuring Inequality using Geo-Spatial Data
The main limitation in the study of income inequality is data availability, especially in developing countries. Our aim is to construct a measure of income inequality for all countries world-wide using geo-spatial satellite data on nighttime lights emission as well as gridded population data. We match population with the night lights data and calculate a Gini-coefficients for all countries of the world from 1992-2013. We use this data in two applications: Measuring the relationship between out-of-pocket health expenditures with inequality, find a significant and positive relationship. Similarly, we find that epidemic disasters are associated with higher inequality.
Room: WST-C.02.12, Weststadttürme Berliner Platz 6-8, Essen
On Monday, December 9 2019, 14:00 - 15:30, Mujaheed Shaikh (Hertie School) will present:
Too Sticky to Switch? Retirement and Health Plan Choices of the Elderly
The success of managed competition in health insurance largely depends on consumer switching behavior. We study whether retirement influences health plan choices of the elderly by combining evidence from a regression discontinuity design exploiting the retirement legislation in Switzerland with structural results from a discrete choice modeling approach. We find that the elderly engage in premium targeting at retirement by actively switching to less generous health plans to offset the cessation of employer contributions. Moreover, we show that the elderly are significantly more likely to switch their insurance model and deductible as a response to a premium shock triggered by retirement. Besides a strong preference for the status quo plan, our structural results indicate that retirement reduces the willingness to pay for the default. Simulated by our findings, we then explore the implications of these for the Swiss health insurance marketplace and provide suggestive evidence of consumer sorting.
Room: WST-C.02.12, Weststadttürme Berliner Platz 6-8, Essen
On Monday, December 2 2019, 14:00 - 15:30, Rob Pryce (University of Sheffield) will present:
The Effect of Alcohol Tax Changes on Retail Prices
Background and Aims: Alcohol duty increases are recommended by the WHO as a ‘best buy’ and as a result have been used as a government policy in helping tackle harmful alcohol consumption. However, the effectiveness of such policies relies heavily on alcohol retailers passing such increases on to the consumers (also referred to as “pass-through”). This study use retail sales data to assess the extent to which recent tax changes have been passed through in the on-trade market (outlets like bars, restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, hotels etc.) and whether this varies across the price distribution.
Setting: January 2007 to December 2017 inclusive, England. Design and Measurements: Product-level quarterly panel data for 777 alcoholic products across seven different outlet types (Hotel, Independent Pub, Managed Pub, Non- Managed Pubs, Proprietary Club, Restaurant, and Sports/Social Club). Products were analysed in seven broad beverage categories (Beer, Cider, RTDs, Spirits, Wine, Sparkling Wine, and Fortified Wine). Panel data quantile regression analysis estimating the impact of 12 excise duty changes and 3 sales tax changes on on-trade English alcohol prices.
Findings: For all seven broad beverage categories, we find evidence to suggest that there exist substantial differences in tax pass-through across the price distribution. At the lowest points of the price distribution, we find evidence of undershifting for the cheapest 25% of products across all outlet locations. Additionally, at the higher end of the distribution, excise tax increases are overshifted such that prices are higher than expected. We decompose our findings further and analyse pass-through separately for each outlet type and find considerable heterogeneity in pass-through across the various on-trade locations.
Conclusions: Pass-through rates vary considerably between outlet types and beverage categories, as well as across the price distribution. Retailers appear to undershift cheaper beverages and subsidise this loss in revenue with an overshift in the relatively more expensive products.
Room: WST-C.02.12, Weststadttürme Berliner Platz 6-8, Essen
