IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/harjfk/rwp09-002.html

Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function

Author

Listed:
  • Finkelstein, Amy N.

    (MIT)

  • Luttmer, Erzo F. P.

    (Harvard University and IZA, Bonn)

  • Notowidigdo, Matthew J.

    (MIT)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Finkelstein, Amy N. & Luttmer, Erzo F. P. & Notowidigdo, Matthew J., 2009. "Approaches to Estimating the Health State Dependence of the Utility Function," Working Paper Series rwp09-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:harjfk:rwp09-002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/workingpapers/citation.aspx?PubId=6185&type=WPN
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecl:harjfk:rwp09-002. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ksharus.html .

    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.