Employers Opting Out of Public Disability Insurance: Selection or Incentive Effects?

This paper analyzes selection and incentive effects of opting out from public to private insurance on employer Disability Insurance (DI) inflow rates. We use administrative information on DI benefit costs and opting-out decisions of a balanced panel of about 140,000 employers that are observed between 2007 and 2011. We argue that the opting-out decision of employers was driven by current DI enrollment and anticipation effects that resulted from short-term expectations on DI costs. In particular, employers opted out when this was most rewarding for them in reducing DI premium rates. When controlling for these effects, our main finding is that there are no incentive effects due to opting out. Thus, publicly and privately insured employers show similar DI inflow rates.

Keywords: Public versus private insurance, Disability insurance, Opting out, Longitudinal analyses

JEL Classification: C23, I13

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Hassink, Wolter H.J. and Koning, Pierre and Zwinkels, Wim, Employers Opting Out of Public Disability Insurance: Selection or Incentive Effects? (July 6, 2015). Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 15-081/V, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2627560 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2627560