Tal Gross

Thank you!
/End

Bottom line: people behave as if their spouse’s plan is a default option. That’s a new peer-effect story — one that matters because the optimal insurance plan is person-specific. What’s right for your spouse may be wrong for you.

But for about 38% of couples, the plan that’s cheapest for one spouse is not cheapest for the other. For them, insisting on a joint plan means leaving significant money on the table — sometimes hundreds of dollars per year.

For most couples, the plan that minimizes household costs is also pretty good for each spouse individually.
Those couples could capture most possible savings simply by picking a better plan together — no need to split.

How much money does “spousal following” actually cost?
We estimate overspending by comparing what people do spend in their chosen plan to what they would spend in their cost-minimizing plan.

Humana introduced popular Walmart-branded plans. Younger spouses were more likely to pick them if their older spouse joined Medicare when the plan was available.
We study this using a regression-discontinuity design that exploits birth dates just before/after the new plans entered the market.

We estimate that beneficiaries are willing to give up about $1,741/year to be on the same plan as their spouse – roughly 76% as much as they give up to avoid switching plans at all.
That’s a lot of money for what might just be administrative convenience.

Over 70% of couples choose the exact same Part D plan. Even among couples whose drug needs are very different, the majority still pick the same plan. We create “placebo spouses” based on observables: <20% overlap.

We have novel data that allows us to link Medicare beneficiaries to their spouses. Now we can see, for the first time, how couples navigate this decision. Spoiler: They navigate it… together. Sometimes too much together.

Economists have studied that question extensively. We know people often don’t pick the cheapest plan for them. We know inertia is huge. We know choice overload matters.
But no one has ever had the data to ask: What happens when you and your spouse both have to choose?

Americans on traditional Medicare have to choose a Part D insurance plan for their drug coverage. There are about three-dozen plans and everyone has to choose one.
How does someone know which plan is the best for them?

Social Defaults and Plan Choice: The Case of Spousal Following Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

📄 New Working Paper: “Social Defaults and Plan Choice: The Case of Spousal Following” — joint with Tim Layton, Daniel Prinz, and Julia Yates.
www.nber.org/papers/w34137
We’ve been working on this for a very long time, and we’re thrilled to share it. 🧵

I talked to one person who recommended searching dissertation databases for all dissertations within two years of the candidate's that include the same key words.

This week we ‪(with @ajhollingsworth.bsky.social talk with @talgross.bsky.social on The Hidden Curriculum on productivity and how to improve our teaching and some ideas for new exercises for your class!

I gave up on LyX a long time ago. Now, I just use Overleaf with co-authors or else a text editor on my own.

GitHub - talgross-bu/LaTeX-template-for-exams: A template to create paper exams with LaTeX A template to create paper exams with LaTeX. Contribute to talgross-bu/LaTeX-template-for-exams development by creating an account on GitHub.

Here's a better way to write exams in TeX: github.com/talgross-bu/...

I posted this thread on Twitter years ago, but I'm switching over to BlueSky. (Not unrelated, I'm proud to be driving a Hyundai EV.)

That's Stata, here's a start in R.

Step 3: eliminated unnecessary ink.

Step 2: all text horizontal. Horizontal text is easier to read than vertical text.

Step 1: labels not legends. This makes the graph much easier to read.

To start, here's a graph with the default Stata options.

Make your graphs better in three easy steps…

GitHub - talgross-bu/Template-for-Overleaf: A LaTeX Template for Economics Papers A LaTeX Template for Economics Papers. Contribute to talgross-bu/Template-for-Overleaf development by creating an account on GitHub.

Here is a LaTeX / Overleaf template for academic papers. This document has a bibliography already incorporated and has shells to incorporate multi-panel figures and complex tables.

github.com/talgross-bu/...

…and in the age of generative AI, paper exams are all we have left.

GitHub - talgross-bu/LaTeX-template-for-exams: A template to create paper exams with LaTeX A template to create paper exams with LaTeX. Contribute to talgross-bu/LaTeX-template-for-exams development by creating an account on GitHub.

It's midterm season. If you're giving a paper exam, consider using this LaTeX shell to write the exam. It adds up all of the points for you and it compiles a solution booklet for you, too.
github.com/talgross-bu/...

I'm teaching two MBA classes this semester: Health Strategy and Managerial Economics. If you are an instructor and my slides might be useful for you, please DM me / email me. I'll send them over.

ChatGPT can help you deal with tables in LaTeX

Tomorrow is the first of November. Consider trying "No Scroll November" if online distractions are a problem for you. For one month, switch to less-harmful habits like gasoline huffing and amateur explosives.

Creating slides for class and I broke ChatGPT