Jessica Min

Working Papers

Causes and Consequences of Rising Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance Costs: Evidence from Insurer Mergers [PDF]

Abstract: U.S. employer-sponsored health insurance costs have quadrupled over the past four decades, placing a significant burden on employers. This paper asks how these rising costs impact U.S. labor markets. I exploit local differences in exposure to national health insurer mergers between 1999 and 2019. Using new administrative data and a difference-in-differences research design, I estimate that insurer mergers account for 22 percent of the overall cost increase in the past two decades. Firms facing higher costs experience employment losses, concentrated among middle-income workers without a college education. I calculate an estimated loss of 5.2 percent for less-educated workers. While some workers reallocate between firms, aggregate employment declines within merger-exposed markets. The resulting increase in unemployment raises government spending on unemployment insurance by 15 percent. Compared to Canada, where health insurance is government-funded, U.S. workers without a college education have experienced 3 percentage points more job losses than their Canadian counterparts over the past two decades. Incorporating my findings into a competitive labor market model, I show that rising health insurance costs explain 44 percent of this excess job loss. 

The Effect of Personal Income Taxes on Inflation: Evidence from U.S. States [PDF]

Abstract: This paper studies the effect of taxes for different income groups on inflation. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I compare states that enact large tax changes to states that do not have personal taxes from 1978 to 2017. I find tax cuts are inflationary. A 1 percentage point decrease in the state income average tax rate for lower-income groups increases prices by 2.5 percent, while a 1 percentage point decrease for higher-income groups increases prices by 1.5 percent. My results suggest the positive relationship between tax cuts and price growth is largely driven by consumer demand and employment growth.

Does Curriculum Matter? The Impact of HIV/AIDS vs. Comprehensive Sex Education on Fertility (with Rachel Fung) [PDF] 

Abstract: How does sex education and its curriculum shape fertility? We examine this question by leveraging a natural experiment arising from the AIDS epidemic,  during which U.S. states introduced mandates requiring either abstinence-based HIV/AIDS education or comprehensive sex education to be taught in schools. We compare cohorts of women in treated states who were attending school to those who had recently graduated when the mandates were implemented, relative to women in control states without mandates. We show that teen births increased by 5.8 per 1,000 women in states mandating only HIV/AIDS education, bringing forward the timing of first births without affecting lifetime fertility. In contrast, we do not find fertility effects in states mandating comprehensive sex education. The findings suggest that narrowly-defined sex education curricula with an abstinence-based emphasis may unintentionally increase teen childbearing by providing information that destigmatizes sexual activity.

Disclosing the Costs of Co-holding Liquid Assets and High-interest Debt has Limited Impact on Behavior (with Rafael Batista, Ella Mao, Abigail Sussmann, and Neale Mahoney) [PDF] 

Abstract: Why do consumers simultaneously maintain low-yield liquid assets and high-interest revolving debt? This behavior, known as "co-holding," affects 23% of credit card users in our sample from a major international bank and costs the typical co-holder hundreds of dollars annually in unnecessary interest charges. Our analysis of 38 months of detailed banking records reveals that co-holding is remarkably persistent, with typical co-holders maintaining this behavior for most months observed. Our analysis also shows that co-holders engage in both co-holding and co-spending–regularly depositing and withdrawing from asset accounts while continuing to use credit cards for new purchases. To test whether co-holding could be addressed through information disclosure we conducted a large-scale field experiment (n=125,328), providing clear information about co-holding behavior and its costs. Customers received targeted messages through their bank's mobile app, where they could easily transfer money from assets to pay down debt. Despite sufficient power to detect economically small effects, we found no meaningful changes in debt repayment amount, though customers did respond in other ways—making more frequent repayments and paying above required minimums. These results challenge explanations based on limited attention or information gaps and suggest that simple information disclosure, even when carefully designed and delivered through trusted channels, may not effectively address costly financial behaviors.