论文标题
何时将市场限制在强制购买下
When to Limit Market Entry under Mandatory Purchase
论文作者
论文摘要
我们研究了受管制健康保险市场启发的问题,例如政府在《平价医疗法案》交流中或雇主与私人保险公司签约以为雇员提供计划时。市场监管机构可以选择不做任何事情,经营自由市场,或者可以通过限制提供商的进入(通过限制选择权来减少消费者福利,但也通过增强竞争减少收入)来行使其监管能力。我们调查限制进入是否会增加或减少从提供商购买的消费者的公用事业(福利减去收入),特别是在“购买无所事事”的外部选择中,这是非常不受欢迎的。 我们主要关注提供者对称的情况。我们提出了(a)在市场上存在的独特对称平衡的消费者价值分布的足够条件,并且(b)实用程序将在有限的条件下更高。 (我们还确定这些结论不一定适用于所有分布,因此某种条件是必要的。)我们的技术主要基于收入最大化的工具,尤其是迈尔森的虚拟价值理论。我们还考虑扩展到提供者在提供计划的成本相同的设置,以及两个具有不对称分配的提供商。
We study a problem inspired by regulated health insurance markets, such as those created by the government in the Affordable Care Act Exchanges or by employers when they contract with private insurers to provide plans for their employees. The market regulator can choose to do nothing, running a Free Market, or can exercise her regulatory power by limiting the entry of providers (decreasing consumer welfare by limiting options, but also decreasing revenue via enhanced competition). We investigate whether limiting entry increases or decreases the utility (welfare minus revenue) of the consumers who purchase from the providers, specifically in settings where the outside option of "purchasing nothing" is prohibitively undesirable. We focus primarily on the case where providers are symmetric. We propose a sufficient condition on the distribution of consumer values for (a) a unique symmetric equilibrium to exist in both markets and (b) utility to be higher with limited entry. (We also establish that these conclusions do not necessarily hold for all distributions, and therefore some condition is necessary.) Our techniques are primarily based on tools from revenue maximization, and in particular Myerson's virtual value theory. We also consider extensions to settings where providers have identical costs for providing plans, and to two providers with an asymmetric distribution.