地点：北京大学朗润园万众楼小教室

　　主持人：李玲

　　主讲人：黄炜 Wei Huang（National University of Singapore）

　　题目：What is in “Moral Hazard”? Evidence from a Quasi-experiment in China

　　报告摘要：

　　Healthcare demand elasticity with respect to price is traditionally interpreted as moral hazard in health economics. Starting from 2011, one city in China significantly lowered the cost sharing of the elderly aged 80 and above. Using the administrative insurance registrar and claim data with more than 2 million individual month observations, we employ a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to identify the effects of lower cost sharing. We started by estimating the elasticity of healthcare usage with respect to price, which is -0.31. We move on to decompose this and find that about the elasticity is largely driven by intensive margin (i.e. the length of stay or the hospitalization expenses) rather than extensive margin (i.e. going to hospital). More importantly, we also find that people with lower income have a three times larger elasticity that those with higher income, suggesting large income effect of lower cost sharing policy. Finally, we explore the local pension policy and present direct evidence for the income effects on hospitalization. These findings provide some new insights about moral hazard in the previous studies.

　　主讲人介绍：

　　Dr HUANG Wei is the President’s Assistant Professor in the Department of Real Estate and Department of Strategy and Policy at National University of Singapore. Prior to joining NUS, Dr Huang was a Post-doctoral Fellow in Aging and Health Economics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Dr Huang received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 2016. He received an M.A in economics from National School of Development at Peking University in 2011, and a B.A. in physics from School of Physics at Peking University in 2008.