Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function

Amy Finkelstein, Erzo Luttmer and Matthew Notowidigdo

No 3925, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: If the marginal utility of consumption depends on health status, this will affect the economic analysis of a number of central problems in public finance, including the optimal structure of health insurance and optimal life cycle savings. In this paper, we describe the promises and challenges of various approaches to estimating the effect of health on the marginal utility of consumption. Our basic conclusion is that while none of these approaches is a panacea, many offer the potential to shed important insights on the nature of health state dependence.

Keywords: insurance; health; state dependence; marginal utility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D12 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2009-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-hpe, nep-ias and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (111)

Published - published in: American Economic Review, 2009, 99(2), 116–121

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp3925.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function (2009)
Working Paper: Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp3925

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().