时间：2014/11/28，下午10：00～11：30

地点：经济学院一楼院史馆（A101）

主讲人：Prof. Hugo Benitez-Silva, 邓媛元

题目：Social Security Disability Applications near Retirement Ages†

摘要：How much do more generous Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) benefits encourage disability applications? This relatively straightforward question has proven difficult to answer empirically due to the challenges present indistinguishing between the effects of cash benefits and those of health insurance provided to DI beneficiaries through the Medicare program. As a result, existing estimates of cash benefit elasticities may be biased. In order to identify the effect of cash benefits on the application decision, variation in cash incentives independent of Medicare health insurance benefits is needed. We propose a new approach to estimating the benefit elasticity of disability applications that capitalizes on just such variation, while purging the cash incentive effect of the medical coverage incentive effect. We focus on the special age window between the Early Retirement Age (ERA) and the Normal Retirement Age (NRA), and exploit an exogenous variation in disability cash benefits that results from the fact that for Americans born after 1937 disability benefits are increasingly more attractive compared to Old Age benefits due to the increase in the NRA, which increased the penalty for early retirement. This quasi-experimental approach allows us to more reliably estimate the effect of cash benefits on the decision to file for disability benefits.

主讲人介绍：Hugo Benitez-Silva：Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies，Economics Department，SUNY-Stony Brook

附件：

di6264_2014_v11_HBS.pdf