The Role of Information in Medicare HMO Markets: The Interplay of Advertising and

描述（由申请人提供）：简而言之，本提案旨在研究广告在Medicare HMO市场中的作用。第一个目标是估计广告和市场份额之间的因果关系，使用收集的，但未报告（消费者）的HMO报告卡评级作为广告支出的工具。这种分析在广告在D部分HMO市场中发挥日益突出的作用的背景下非常重要。由于这方面的文献有限，揭示这一重要关系将有助于卫生经济学文献以及一般的广告经济学文献。第二个目标是更好地估计成绩单的价值。以前对成绩单的研究一般都发现，它们对市场份额有重大但很小的影响。这些研究都没有纳入广告的作用。本论文计划成为第一个研究广告和成绩单对市场份额变动的单独和组合影响的论文。除了发现一个更好的估计成绩单的价值，它将提供深入了解如何一个公司的广告策略可以减轻或加强成绩单的影响。最后，我们的目标是提供严格的经验证据来测试广告和健康风险的有利选择之间的联系。先前的文献一直受到HMO索赔数据的缺乏，以研究HMO吸引的健康风险的限制。我们计划通过使用每个运营的HMO的个人调查数据来收集自我报告的健康风险措施来规避这个问题。该分析将允许对广告与有利选择的关系进行严格测试，并将增加我们对广告在Medicare HMO市场中所扮演角色的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): In short, this proposal sets out to study the role of advertising in the Medicare HMO markets. The first goal is to estimate a causal relationship between advertising and market share, using collected, but unreported (to consumers) HMO report card ratings as an instrument for advertising expenditures. This analysis is important in the context of the increasingly prominent role that advertising is now playing in the Part D HMO market. Due to the limited literature in this area, uncovering this important relationship will contribute to both the health economics literature as well as the general advertising economics literature. The second goal is to provide a better estimate of the value of report cards. Prior studies of report cards have generally found that they have a significant, yet small, impact on market share. None of these studies incorporate a role of advertising. This dissertation plans to be the first to study the individual and combined impacts of advertising and report cards on movements in market share. In addition to uncovering a better estimate of the value of report cards, it will provide insight into how a firm's advertising strategies can either mitigate or enhance the report card impact. Lastly, our goal is to provide rigorous empirical evidence to test the link between advertising and favorable selection of health risks. The prior literature has been limited by lack of HMO claims data to study the attracted health risks by HMOs. We plan to circumvent this problem by using individual-survey data from each operating HMO to gather self-reported measures of health risk. The analysis will allow a rigorous test of how advertising is related to favorable selection, and will add to our understanding of the role that advertising plays in the Medicare HMO market.