U.S. tax policy and health insurance demand: can a regressive policy improve welfare?

The U.S. tax policy on health insurance is regressive because it favors only those offered group insurance through their employers, who tend to have a relatively high income. Moreover, the subsidy takes the form of deductions from the progressive income tax system, giving high-income earners a larger subsidy. To understand the effects of the policy, we construct a dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogenous agents and an endogenous demand for health insurance. We use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to calibrate the process for income, health expenditures, and health insurance offer status through employers and succeed in matching the pattern of insurance demand as observed in the data. We find that despite the regressiveness of the current policy, a complete removal of the subsidy would result in a partial collapse of the group insurance market, a significant reduction in the insurance coverage, and a reduction in welfare coverage. There is, however, room for raising the coverage and significantly improving welfare by extending a refundable credit to the individual insurance market.

Health insurance and tax policy

The U.S. tax policy on health insurance favors only those offered a group insurance through their employers. This policy is highly regressive since the subsidy takes the form of deductions from the progressive tax system. The paper investigates alternatives to the current policy. We find that the complete removal of the subsidy results in a significant reduction in the insurance coverage and serious welfare deterioration. However, eliminating regressiveness in the group insurance subsidy and extending benefits to the private insurance market improve welfare and raise the coverage. Our work is the first in highlighting the importance of studying health policy in a general equilibrium framework with an endogenous demand for the health insurance. We use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) to calibrate the process for income, health expenditure shocks, and health insurance offer status and succeed in producing the pattern of insurance demand as observed in the data, which serve as a solid benchmark for the policy experiments.

Taxing capital? : not a bad idea after all!

In this paper we quantitatively characterize the optimal capital and labor income tax in an overlapping generations model with idiosyncratic, uninsurable income shocks, where households also differ permanently with respect to their ability to generate income. The welfare criterion we employ is ex-ante (before ability is realized) expected (with respect to uninsurable productivity shocks) utility of a newborn in a stationary equilibrium. Embedded in this welfare criterion is a concern of the policy maker for insurance against idiosyncratic shocks and redistribution among agents of different abilities. Such insurance and redistribution can be achieved by progressive labor income taxes or taxation of capital income, or both. The policy maker has then to trade off these concerns against the standard distortions these taxes generate for the labor supply and capital accumulation decision. We find that the optimal capital income tax rate is not only positive, but is significantly positive. The optimal (marginal and average) tax rate on capital is 36%, in conjunction with a progressive labor income tax code that is, to a first approximation, a flat tax of 23% with a deduction that corresponds to about $6,000 (relative to an average income of households in the model of$35,000). We argue that the high optimal capital income tax is mainly driven by the life cycle structure of the model whereas the optimal progressivity of the labor income tax is due to the insurance and redistribution role of the income tax system. Klassifizierung: E62, H21, H2

Socio-Cultural Heritages of a Community Center : Traces of the modern local industry and citizen movements

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate an example of modern architecture in Shiogama Japan in terms of the effects of local industry and local community movements in relation to the transformation of Japanese society in the post-war period. As the ultimate purpose of the modern movement in architecture is to benefit the common people, we decided to focus on the community centres that were built after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. At that time Japanese society changed rapidly from a military regime to a democratic regime. The community centre that is dealt with in this paper was built in the early 1950s, so we can expect to find some aspects of building a democratic society behind the actual building project. We are going to discuss the invisible value of this community centre in the period when the Japanese government promoted interior resources development projects. Through this discussion, we are able to understand some hidden historical values of the community centre, which represents not only the social phenomenon of that period in the architectural expression and technical aspects of the building but also the local industrial heritage. We describe the importance of sustaining support for the local peoples’ activities by conserving this community centre, and then explain how the municipality of Shiogama decided to renovate this historical piece of modern architecture. Now the former community centre has been re-born as a community centre and a museum of art for a local painter. 本論の目的は、戦後の日本の社会に関する地場産業と地域コミュニティに関して、塩竈市の近代公共建築を事例に検討することにある。近代の究極の目的は社会福祉であると考えられていることを考慮して、社会福祉の増進が明確に憲法に示され、目指された第二次世界大戦後の日本社会で建設された公民館に関して議論を展開してゆく。本論で検討する公民館は1950年代に建設されたので、民主主義による社会構築に関する建築的側面を発見する事が期待できると考えた。加えて、当時の日本政府は国内資源の開発を積極的に目指していたことから、1950年台の公民館の背景に存在する地場産業の側面を検討してゆく。本論を通して、公民館の隠れた歴史的価値を理解した。特に建築表現における技術的な側面と地域産業の痕跡に加えて、地域の社会現象も公民館建築に反映されていることが把握できた。その上で、公民館の保存が、地域社会のコミュニティの支援として役割を担っているように、建築の維持や保存が重要であることを示した。公民館は、地域の画家の美術館として活用されていることを通じて、改修事業についても触れている

哺乳類ゲノムにみられる古代レトロウイルスの制御性RNA配列とレトロウイルス由来遺伝子制御への寄与

京都大学新制・課程博士博士(医学)甲第24524号医博第4966号新制||医||1065(附属図書館)京都大学大学院医学研究科医学専攻(主査)教授 齊藤 博英, 教授 萩原 正敏, 教授 山崎 渉学位規則第4条第1項該当Doctor of Medical ScienceKyoto UniversityDFA