Question

Struggling with this one

Job-specific human capital. In this problem, based on a simplified

version of the model in Bhattacharya and Sood (2006), we will explore how linking employment and health insurance provision can (partially) solve the adverse selection problem if the labor market is competitive. Suppose that there are two types of workers - sickly workers with probability ps of falling ill over the course of the next year, and robust workers with probability pr < ps of falling ill. Employers cannot observe whether a worker is sickly or robust, and because of U.S. law they can only decide to offer health insurance to allof their workers, or none at all. We will assume that a just-hired employee is less productive than an employee who has more experience; let MPn be the marginal value product of new employees, and MPe > MPn be the marginal value product of experienced employees. In this simple model, marginal value product depends only on experience, not on whether a worker is sickly or robust.


(a) Consider an employer deciding whether to hire a new employee who will produce a marginal value product of MP. If the employer offers income and no health insurance, what wage, w, will the employer have to pay the employee in a competitive labor market? What would happen if the employer offered the employee less? What would happen if the employer offered the employee more?

Answer 1

The wage of the marginal employee is related wiht the marginal productivity of this employee

Step-by-step explanation:

If the employer offer less, the employer can hire more employees, an the marginal productivity of the employees will decreases, and the employer will fire the employees and hire new ones, but if the employer offer more, it will cause losses, and the employer will fire this marginal employee and hire a new one. The wage it is determined by the average productivity, if there are to much sickly workers, the average productivy will be low, also the wage that the employer will offer.