Public Economics.

• Position: Program and Working Group Meetings

NBER's Program on Public Economics met at Stanford University on November 6-7. Organizers Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez, both of the University of California, Berkeley and NBER, chose the following papers to discuss:

Amy Finkelstein, MIT and NBER; Liran Einav, Stanford University and NBER; and Mark R. Cullen, Yale University, "Estimating Welfare in Insurance Markets Using Variation in Prices" (NBER Working Paper No. 14436)

Discussant: Dan Silverman, University of Michigan and NBER

Henrik Kleven, London School of Economics, and Wojciech Kopczuk, Columbia University and NBER, "Transfer Program Complexity and the Take-up of Social Benefits" (NBER Working Paper No. 14301)

Discussant: B. Douglas Bernheim, Stanford University and NBER

Hanming Fang and Peter Arcidiacono, Duke University and NBER, and Esteban Aucejo, Duke University, "Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch? A New Test and Evidence"

Discussant: Caroline M. Hoxby, Stanford University and NBER

David Albouy, University of Michigan and NBER, "Are Big Cities Really Bad Places to Live? Improving Quality-of-Life Estimates Across Cities" (NBER Working Paper No. 14472)

Discussant: Patrick Kline, University of California, Berkeley

Fernando Ferreira, University of Pennsylvania and NBER; Stephanie Riegg Cellini, George Washington University; and Jesse Rothstein, Princeton University and NBER, "The Value of School Facilities: Evidence from a Dynamic Regression Discontinuity Design"

Discussant: Michael Lovenheim, Stanford University

Raj Chetty and Emmanuel Saez, "Information and Behavioral Response to Taxation: Evidence from an Experiment with EITC Clients at H&R Block"

Discussant: J. Karl Scholz, University of Wisconsin and NBER

Wojciech Kopczuk, and Roger H. Gordon, University of California, San Diego and NBER, "The Choice of the Personal Income Tax Base"

Discussant: Matt Weinzerl, Harvard University

Einav, Finkelstein, and Cullen show how standard consumer and producer theory can be used to estimate welfare in insurance markets with selection. Their key observation is that the same price variation needed to identify the demand curve also identifies how costs vary as market participants endogenously respond to price. With estimates of both the demand and cost curves, welfare analysis is straightforward. The authors illustrate their approach by applying it to the employee health insurance choices at Alcoa, Inc. They detect adverse selection in this setting, but estimate that its quantitative...