Victoria Marone

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

When Should There be Vertical Choice in Health Insurance Markets? with Adrienne Sabety. January 2022. American Economic Review, 112 (1): 304-42. [Online Appendix] [Replication Materials] 

•  Summary on Microeconomic Insights

Regulating Markups in U.S. Health Insurance with Steve Cicala and Ethan Lieber. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019. [Online Appendix] [Replication Materials]

Narrow Networks on the Health Insurance Marketplaces: Prevalence, Pricing, And The Cost Of Network Breadth with Leemore Dafny, Igal Hendel, and Christopher Ody. Health Affairs, September 2017.      

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

All Medicaid Expansions Are Not Created Equal: The Geography and Targeting of the Affordable Care Act with Craig Garthwaite, John Graves, Tal Gross, Zeynal Karaca, and Matthew Notowidigdo. Brookings Institute, September 2019. [NBER Working Paper No. 26289]

Oscar Health Insurance: What Lies Ahead for a Unicorn Insurance Entrant? with Leemore Dafny. Harvard Business School Case 319-025, August 2018 (Revised August 2019). 

WORKING PAPERS

Multidimensional Screening and Menu Design in Health Insurance Markets with Hector Chade, Amanda Starc, and Jeroen Swinkles [December 2023] (Reject and Resubmit at American Economic Review)

Designing Dynamic Reassignment Mechanisms: Evidence from GP Allocation with Ingrid Huitfeldt and Daniel Waldinger [May 2024] [NBER Working Paper No. 32458]

WORK IN PROGRESS

The Distributional Effects of Cost-Sharing in a Universal Healthcare System with Simon Bensnes and Ingrid Huitfeldt [draft coming soon]    

The Risk Protection Value of Moral Hazard with Angie Acquatella

Abstract: Standard health insurance contracts lower the marginal out-of-pocket price of healthcare utilization, and it is well-established that this leads to higher consumption of healthcare ("ex post moral hazard''). Relative to insurance that does not distort the marginal price of care, standard contracts therefore provide consumers additional ex post utility in the form of incremental healthcare consumption. We show that if incremental care is differentially valuable in different health states, moral hazard directly interacts with the value of risk protection derived from insurance. In particular, if the value of incremental care is higher in sick rather than healthy states, the presence of moral hazard allows consumers to better smooth their marginal utility of consumption. Under standard parameterizations of consumer demand for healthcare and health insurance, estimates in the literature imply that moral hazard accounts for as much as 25 percent of the total value of risk protection derived from insurance. Moreover, in some cases, insurance contracts that permit ex post moral hazard in fact increase social welfare relative to contracts that do not distort the marginal price of care.

Optimal Insurance for Healthcare Amenities with Ingrid Huitfeldt      

Abstract: We consider a model of a health insurance market in which sick consumers face a choice of healthcare amenity level. A minimum amenity level is available at no out-of-pocket cost (under some universal, base level of insurance coverage), but consumer heterogeneity drives demand for higher amenity levels. We study two central policy questions related to the design of "top-up'' insurance markets: (i) at what level to set the universally-available minimum amenity level, and (ii) whether consumers should retain the monetary value of this benefit if they choose a higher amenity level. We estimate the model in the context of the Norwegian market for Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART).        

Winners and Losers Under Counterfactual Health Risk Pooling with Benjamin Vatter                                                                                                                                                 

TEACHING

ECO 325K Health Economics: Spring 2022–Spring 2024 (undergraduate)