Working Paper: NBER ID: w18913
Authors: Keith Marzilli Ericson; Judd B. Kessler
Abstract: We examine how the articulation of government policy affects behavior. Our experiment compares a government mandate to purchase health insurance to a financially equivalent tax on the uninsured. Participants report their probability of purchasing health insurance under one of the two articulations of the policy. The experiment was conducted in four waves, from December 2011 to November 2012. We document the controversy over the Affordable Care Act's insurance mandate provision that changed the political discourse during the year. Pre-controversy, articulating the policy as a mandate, rather than a financially equivalent tax, increased probability of insurance purchase by 10.6 percentage points -- an effect comparable to a $1000 decrease in annual premiums. After the controversy, the mandate is no more effective than the tax. Our results show that how a policy is articulated affects behavior and that persuasion and public opinion management can help achieve policy objectives at lower cost.
Keywords: health insurance; government policy; mandates; taxes
JEL Codes: D02; D03; D04; H2; H3; I13; K42
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| the framing of the policy (E60) | behavioral intentions (D91) |
| the effectiveness of the mandate articulation disappears (D78) | after the controversy surrounding the Affordable Care Act (I13) |
| articulating a government policy as a mandate rather than as a tax (H29) | increases the probability of purchasing health insurance (G52) |