Amelie Wuppermann

In the United States, individuals with disabilities and those aged ≥65 can supplement their Medicare with so-called stand-alone Medicare Part D prescription drug plans. Beneficiaries can switch their stand-alone prescription drug plans annually, but most do not. Indirect evidence has raised concerns that non-switchers do not even make plan comparis...

The access and use of administrative health data in Germany is limited by several factors. Due to the large number and heterogeneity of data holders, data are usually only available in fragmented form, and access is often regulated in a non-transparent manner. Linkage of health data with other data sources is hardly possible for legal and logistic...

ENGLISH: Increased economization in the German health care system may have an impact on medical decisions. A selective literature search presents an overview of the current evidence on the influence of financial incentives on inpatient healthcare in Germany. Due to the current economic pressure, physicians increasingly feel subjected to financial c...

This paper analyzes whether green nudges – displaying nature pictures or providing information on other people’s behavior before the consumer makes a choice – can promote more environmentally friendly food choices. Based on data from an online, discrete choice experiment conducted in Germany, in which randomly selected groups of participants were s...

Significance From 1990 to 2018, the Black–White American life expectancy gap fell 48.9% and mortality inequality decreased, although progress stalled after 2012 as life expectancy plateaued. Had improvements continued at the 1990 to 2012 rate, the racial gap in life expectancy would have closed by 2036. Despite decreasing mortality inequality, inco...

Consumers’ health plan choices are highly persistent even though optimal plans change over time. This paper separates two sources of inertia, inattention to plan choice and switching costs. We develop a panel data model with separate attention and choice stages, linked by heterogeneity in acuity, i.e., the ability and willingness to make diligent c...

We use data from the German Federal Statistical Office on population counts, births, deaths and income to study the development of socio‐economic inequality in mortality rates from 1990 to 2015 for different age groups and both genders. Ranking the 401 German districts by average disposable income per capita, we observe large inequalities in distri...

Although there is a large gap between Black and White American life expectancies, the gap fell 48.9%between 1990 and 2018, mainly due to mortality declines among Black Americans. We examine age-specific mortality trends and racial gaps in life expectancy in high- and low-income US areas and with reference to six European countries. Inequalities in...

Der 10-jährige Jubiläumsworkshop des dggö-Ausschusses Allokation und Verteilung fand am 15. und 16. November 2019 an der Universität Konstanz statt und wurde von Friedrich Breyer (Lehrstuhl für Wirtschafts- und Sozialpolitik) und seinem Lehrstuhlteam ausgerichtet.

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its effects on stress-related outpatient diagnoses from the univ...

Abstract While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its effects on stress-related outpatient diagnoses from...

Birth weight manipulation has been documented in per-case hospital reimbursement systems, in which hospitals receive more money for otherwise equal newborns with birth weight just below compared to just above specific birth weight thresholds. As hospitals receive more money for cases with weight below the thresholds, having a (reported) weight belo...

Many competitive health insurance markets adjust payments to participating health plans according to their enrollees' risk - including based on diagnostic information. We investigate responses of German health plans to the introduction of morbidity-based risk adjustment in the Statutory Health Insurance in 2009, which triggers payments based on "va...

Das Gesetz zur Stärkung des Wettbewerbs in der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung aus dem Jahr 2007 und andere Gesundheitsreformen der letzten Jahre hatten zum Ziel, den Wettbewerb im deutschen Gesundheitssystem allgemein und insbesondere unter den Krankenkassen zu intensivieren, um eine Verbesserung der medizinischen Versorgung und eine Steigerung d...

Background: The Affordable Care Act established policy mechanisms to increase health insurance coverage in the United States. While insurance coverage has increased, 10%-15% of the US population remains uninsured. Objectives: To assess whether health insurance literacy and financial literacy predict being uninsured, covered by Medicaid, or cover...

Nonlinear price schedules generally have heterogeneous effects on health-care demand. We develop and apply a finite mixture bivariate probit model to analyze whether there are heterogeneous reactions to the introduction of a nonlinear price schedule in the German statutory health insurance system. In administrative insurance claims data from the la...

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a leading diagnosed health condition among children in many developed countries but the causes underlying these high levels of ADHD remain highly controversial. Recent research for the U.S., Canada and some European countries shows that children who enter school relatively young have higher ADHD ra...

Economic theory predicts that private information on risks in insurance markets leads to adverse selection. To counterbalance private information insurers collect and use information on applicants to assess their risk and calculate premiums in an underwriting process. Using data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) this paper docume...

This paper applies the theory of relational contracts to a model in which a couple decides upon fertility and subsequently on continuation of the relationship. We formalize the idea that within-household-cooperation can be supported by selfinterest. Since the costs of raising children—a household public good—are unequally distributed between partne...

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is a leading diagnosed health condition among children in many developed countries but the causes underlying these high levels of ADHD remain highly controversial. Recent research for the U.S., Canada and some European countries shows that children who enter school relatively young have higher ADHD ra...

Report in German Abstract (German) Hintergrund: Internationale Studien haben für einige europäische Länder sowie für Kanada und die USA einen Zusammenhang zwischen Diagnose und Medikation der Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit-Hyperaktivitätsstörung (ADHS) und dem Geburtsmonat aufgezeigt. Die Geburtsmonatsunterschiede treten insbesondere zwischen Monaten vor u...

The perception of health risks and risky health behaviors are closely associated. In this paper, we investigate the accuracy of health risk perceptions among obese individuals, aged 50-62 years. We compare subjective risk perceptions for various diseases elicited in the American Life Panel to individual's objective risks of the same diseases. We fi...

Significance The ultimate success of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) depends on how well the health insurance exchanges can bring the benefits of private competition to individuals in the form of lower premiums. Doing so requires that individuals, when shopping for health insurance, correctly weigh the benefits and costs of various insurance options....

We investigate two determinants of the price sensitivity of health plan demand: the size of the choice set and the salience of premium differences. Using variation in both features in the German Social Health Insurance (SHI) and information on health plan switches of retirees in the German Socio Economic Panel, augmented with information on individ...

Under the U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA), many low income consumers will become eligible for government support to buy health insurance. Whether these consumers are able to take advantage of the support and to make sound decisions about purchasing health insurance will likely depend on their knowledge and skills in navigating complex financial prod...

This paper evaluates whether health plans in Germany's Social Health Insurance select on an easily observable predictor of risk: geography. To identify plan behavior separately from concurrent demand-side adverse selection, I implement a double-blind audit study in which plans are contacted by fictitious applicants from different locations. I find...

Economic theory stresses the importance of adverse selection in competitive insurance markets. The empirical evidence for adverse selection in different health-related insurance markets, however, is mixed. This study evaluates whether different degrees of private information left after different underwriting processes could explain these findings....

Recent studies conclude that teachers are important for student learning but it remains uncertain what actually determines effective teaching. This study directly peers into the black box of educational production by investigating the relationship between lecture style teaching and student achievement. Based on matched student-teacher data for the...

Recent studies conclude that teachers are of vital importance for student learning but it remains uncertain what actually makes a good teacher. While most studies focus on observable and unobservable characteristics of the teacher, this study investigates the more neglected relationship between teaching practices and student achievement. Based on m...

"In dem Forschungsbericht werden die Datensätze der Bundesagentur für Arbeit vorgestellt, die für die mikroökonometrischen Untersuchungen zur Verfügung stehen. Es handelt sich insbesondere um die Bewerberangebotsdaten (BewA), um die Beschäftigtenhistorik (BeH) sowie um die integrierten Erwerbsbiographien (IEB). Die Autoren diskutieren Probleme, die...