IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v37y2014icp178-191.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Estimating demand elasticities using nonlinear pricing

Author

Listed:
  • Dalton, Christina M.

Abstract

Nonlinear pricing is prevalent in industries such as health care, public utilities, and telecommunications. However, this pricing scheme introduces bias into estimating elasticities for welfare analysis or policy changes. I develop a local elasticity estimation method that uses nonlinear price schedules to isolate consumers' expenditure choices from selection and simultaneity biases. This method improves over previous approaches by using commonly-available observational data and requiring only a single general monotonicity assumption. Using claims-level data on health insurance with two nonlinearities, I am able to measure two separate elasticities, and find that elasticity declines from −0.26 to−0.09 by the second nonlinearity. These estimates are then used to calculate moral hazard deadweight loss. This method enables estimation of many policies with nonlinear pricing which previous tools could not address.

Suggested Citation

  • Dalton, Christina M., 2014. "Estimating demand elasticities using nonlinear pricing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 178-191.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:37:y:2014:i:c:p:178-191
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2014.08.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718714000873
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2014.08.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre & Durand, Franck & Geoffard, Pierre-Yves, 1998. "Moral hazard and the demand for physician services: First lessons from a French natural experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 499-511, May.
    2. Maddock, Rodney & Castano, Elkin & Vella, Frank, 1992. "Estimating Electricity Demand: The Cost of Linearising the Budget Constraint," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 74(2), pages 350-354, May.
    3. Herriges, Joseph A & King, Kathleen Kuester, 1994. "Residential Demand for Electricity under Inverted Block Rates: Evidence from a Controlled Experiment," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 12(4), pages 419-430, October.
    4. Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Stephen P. Ryan & Paul Schrimpf & Mark R. Cullen, 2013. "Selection on Moral Hazard in Health Insurance," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 178-219, February.
    5. Aviva Aron-Dine & Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein, 2013. "The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, Three Decades Later," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 197-222, Winter.
    6. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    7. Herriges, Joseph A. & King, K.A., 1994. "Residential Demand for Electricity Under Block Rate Structures: Evidence from a Controlled Experiment," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1498, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    8. Stefan Boes & Michael Gerfin, 2016. "Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(11), pages 1483-1496, November.
    9. Janssen, Richard, 1992. "Time prices and the demand for GP services," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 34(7), pages 725-733, April.
    10. Emmanuel Saez, 2010. "Do Taxpayers Bunch at Kink Points?," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 180-212, August.
    11. Phelps, Charles E & Newhouse, Joseph P, 1974. "Coinsurance, the Price of Time, and the Demand for Medical Services," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 56(3), pages 334-342, August.
    12. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Emmanuel Saez, 2013. "Using Differences in Knowledge across Neighborhoods to Uncover the Impacts of the EITC on Earnings," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2683-2721, December.
    13. Reiss, Peter C. & White, Matthew W., 2002. "Household Electricity Demand, Revisited," Research Papers 1830, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    14. Rosa L. Matzkin, 2003. "Nonparametric Estimation of Nonadditive Random Functions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(5), pages 1339-1375, September.
    15. Eichner, Matthew J, 1998. "The Demand for Medical Care: What People Pay Does Matter," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(2), pages 117-121, May.
    16. Aviva Aron-Dine & Liran Einav & Amy Finkelstein & Mark Cullen, 2012. "Moral hazard in health insurance: How important is forward looking behavior?," Discussion Papers 11-007, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    17. Michael D. Grubb & Matthew Osborne, 2015. "Cellular Service Demand: Biased Beliefs, Learning, and Bill Shock," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 234-271, January.
    18. Rosett, Richard N & Huang, Lien-fu, 1973. "The Effect of Health Insurance on the Demand for Medical Care," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(2), pages 281-305, Part I, M.
    19. Katja Seim & V. Brian Viard, 2011. "The Effect of Market Structure on Cellular Technology Adoption and Pricing," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 221-251, May.
    20. Ching-I Huang, 2008. "Estimating demand for cellular phone service under nonlinear pricing," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 6(4), pages 371-413, December.
    21. Hausman, Jerry A, 1985. "The Econometrics of Nonlinear Budget Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1255-1282, November.
    22. Burtless, Gary & Hausman, Jerry A, 1978. "The Effect of Taxation on Labor Supply: Evaluating the Gary Negative Income Tax Experiments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(6), pages 1103-1130, December.
    23. Duarte, Fabian, 2012. "Price elasticity of expenditure across health care services," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 824-841.
    24. Van de Ven, Wynand P. M. M. & Van Praag, Bernard M. S., 1981. "The demand for deductibles in private health insurance : A probit model with sample selection," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 229-252, November.
    25. Douglas Almond & Joseph J. Doyle, 2011. "After Midnight: A Regression Discontinuity Design in Length of Postpartum Hospital Stays," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 1-34, August.
    26. Soren Blomquist & Whitney Newey, 2002. "Nonparametric Estimation with Nonlinear Budget Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2455-2480, November.
    27. Newhouse, Joseph P. & Phelps, Charles E. & Marquis, M. Susan, 1980. "On having your cake and eating it too : Econometric problems in estimating the demand for health services," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 365-390, August.
    28. Peter C. Reiss & Matthew W. White, 2006. "Evaluating Welfare with Nonlinear Prices," NBER Working Papers 12370, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    29. Keeler, Emmett B. & Rolph, John E., 1988. "The demand for episodes of treatment in the health insurance experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(4), pages 337-367, December.
    30. Diakité, Daouda & Semenov, Aggey & Thomas, Alban, 2009. "A proposal for social pricing of water supply in Côte d'Ivoire," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 258-268, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Gerfin & Boris Kaiser & Christian Schmid, 2015. "Healthcare Demand in the Presence of Discrete Price Changes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1164-1177, September.
    2. Herr, A. & Suppliet, M., 2011. "Co-Payment Exemptions and Reference Prices: an Empirical Study of Pharmaceutical Prices in Germany," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 11/18, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    3. Toshiaki Iizuka & Hitoshi Shigeoka, 2018. "Free for Children? Patient Cost-sharing and Healthcare Utilization," NBER Working Papers 25306, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Minke Remmerswaal & Jan Boone & Michiel Bijlsma & Rudy Douven, 2017. "Cost-Sharing Design Matters: A Comparison of the Rebate and Deductible in Healthcare," CPB Discussion Paper 367, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    5. Kowalski, Amanda E., 2015. "Estimating the tradeoff between risk protection and moral hazard with a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 122-135.
    6. M. Antonini & R. C. van Kleef & J. Henriquez & F. Paolucci, 2023. "Can risk rating increase the ability of voluntary deductibles to reduce moral hazard?," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 48(1), pages 130-156, January.
    7. Gregory Cox, 2018. "Almost Sure Uniqueness of a Global Minimum Without Convexity," Papers 1803.02415, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2019.
    8. Remmerswaal, Minke & Boone, Jan & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, Rudy, 2019. "Cost-sharing design matters: A comparison of the rebate and deductible in healthcare," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 83-97.
    9. Boone, Jan & Remmerswaal, Minke & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, Rudy, 2017. "Cost-Sharing Design Matters: A Comparison of the Rebate and Deductible in Healthcare," CEPR Discussion Papers 12507, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Lin, Haizhen & Sacks, Daniel W., 2019. "Intertemporal substitution in health care demand: Evidence from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 29-43.
    11. Remmerswaal, Minke & Boone, Jan & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, R.C.M.H., 2017. "Cost-Sharing Design Matters : A Comparison of the Rebate and Deductible in Healthcare," Other publications TiSEM 67163c04-3d3b-499c-882c-d, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    12. Anderson, David M. & Hoagland, Alex & Zhu, Ed, 2024. "Medical bill shock and imperfect moral hazard," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    13. Patrick Bajari & Christina Dalton & Han Hong & Ahmed Khwaja, 2014. "Moral hazard, adverse selection, and health expenditures: A semiparametric analysis," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(4), pages 747-763, December.
    14. Suppliet, Moritz & Herr, Annika, 2016. "Cost-Sharing and Drug Pricing Strategies : Introducing Tiered Co-Payments in Reference Price Markets," Other publications TiSEM 4d692f0e-8577-4392-b413-2, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    15. Remmerswaal, Minke & Boone, Jan & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, R.C.M.H., 2017. "Cost-Sharing Design Matters : A Comparison of the Rebate and Deductible in Healthcare," Other publications TiSEM 624251d4-89fb-4c0b-8dd1-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Kairies-Schwarz, Nadja & Harrison, Glenn W. & Han, Johann, 2018. "Deductibles and Health Care Utilization: An Experiment on the Role of Forward-Looking Behavior," VfS Annual Conference 2018 (Freiburg, Breisgau): Digital Economy 181588, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    17. Remmerswaal, Minke & Boone, Jan & Bijlsma, Michiel & Douven, R.C.M.H., 2017. "Cost-Sharing Design Matters : A Comparison of the Rebate and Deductible in Healthcare," Discussion Paper 2017-039, Tilburg University, Tilburg Law and Economic Center.
    18. Guo, Audrey & Zhang, Jonathan, 2019. "What to expect when you are expecting: Are health care consumers forward-looking?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    19. Liang Chen & Yao Luo, 2023. "Empirical Analysis of Network Effects in Nonlinear Pricing Data," Working Papers tecipa-758, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    20. Haizhen Lin & Daniel W. Sacks, 2016. "Intertemporal Substitution in Health Care Demand: Evidence from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment," NBER Working Papers 22802, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kowalski, Amanda E., 2015. "Estimating the tradeoff between risk protection and moral hazard with a nonlinear budget set model of health insurance," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 122-135.
    2. Powell, David & Goldman, Dana, 2021. "Disentangling moral hazard and adverse selection in private health insurance," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 222(1), pages 141-160.
    3. Guo, Audrey & Zhang, Jonathan, 2019. "What to expect when you are expecting: Are health care consumers forward-looking?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    4. Zarek C. Brot-Goldberg & Amitabh Chandra & Benjamin R. Handel & Jonathan T. Kolstad, 2017. "What does a Deductible Do? The Impact of Cost-Sharing on Health Care Prices, Quantities, and Spending Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1261-1318.
    5. Dunn, Abe, 2016. "Health insurance and the demand for medical care: Instrumental variable estimates using health insurer claims data," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 74-88.
    6. Amanda Kowalski, 2016. "Censored Quantile Instrumental Variable Estimates of the Price Elasticity of Expenditure on Medical Care," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(1), pages 107-117, January.
    7. Kurt Lavetti & Thomas DeLeire & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2023. "How do low‐income enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces respond to cost‐sharing?," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 90(1), pages 155-183, March.
    8. Michael Gerfin & Boris Kaiser & Christian Schmid, 2015. "Healthcare Demand in the Presence of Discrete Price Changes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(9), pages 1164-1177, September.
    9. Ellis, Randall P. & Martins, Bruno & Zhu, Wenjia, 2017. "Health care demand elasticities by type of service," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 232-243.
    10. Cristina Lopez-Mayan, 2014. "Microeconometric Analysis of Residential Water Demand," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(1), pages 137-166, September.
    11. Chung Jen Yang & Ying Che Tsai & Joseph J. Tien, 2017. "The Impacts of Persistent Behaviour and Cost-Sharing Policy on Demand for Outpatient Visits by the Elderly: Evidence from Taiwan’s National Health Insurance," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 42(1), pages 31-52, January.
    12. Stefan Boes & Michael Gerfin, 2016. "Does Full Insurance Increase the Demand for Health Care?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(11), pages 1483-1496, November.
    13. M. Antonini & R. C. van Kleef & J. Henriquez & F. Paolucci, 2023. "Can risk rating increase the ability of voluntary deductibles to reduce moral hazard?," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 48(1), pages 130-156, January.
    14. Koji Miyawaki & Yasuhiro Omori & Akira Hibiki, 2018. "A discrete/continuous choice model on a nonconvex budget set," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(2), pages 89-113, February.
    15. Einav, Liran & Finkelstein, Amy & Schrimpf, Paul, 2017. "Bunching at the kink: Implications for spending responses to health insurance contracts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 27-40.
    16. Reiss, Peter C. & White, Matthew W., 2002. "Household Electricity Demand, Revisited," Research Papers 1830, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    17. David Powell & Dana P. Goldman, 2014. "Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection in Private Health Insurance," Working Papers WR-1032, RAND Corporation.
    18. Perronnin, Marc, 2013. "Effet de l'assurance complémentaire santé sur les consommations médicales, entre risque moral et amélioration de l'accès aux soins," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/13659 edited by Wittwer, Jérôme.
    19. Lu, Yi & Shi, Julie & Yang, Wanyu, 2019. "Expenditure response to health insurance policies: Evidence from kinks in rural China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    20. Einav, Liran & Finkelstein, Amy & Schrimpf, Paul, 2019. "Reprint of: Bunching at the kink: Implications for spending responses to health insurance contracts," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 117-130.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Elasticity; Nonlinear; Health insurance; Moral hazard;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D40 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - General
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • C14 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods and Methodology: General - - - Semiparametric and Nonparametric Methods: General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:37:y:2014:i:c:p:178-191. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.