Department Seminar: Jonathan Beauchamp

The department seminar will be given by Jonathan P. Beauchamp, an assistant professor at George Mason University. Jonathan's research focuses on the emerging field of ‘genoeconomics’ as well as on applied microeconomics, cultural economics, and behavioral/experimental economics. 

You can find his research here: https://jonathanpbeauchamp.com/

Title: Measuring selection in insurance markets due to genetic prediction

Abstract: The predictive power of genetic data has been increasing rapidly and is reaching levels of clinical utility for many diseases. Meanwhile, many jurisdictions have banned insurers from utilizing genetic information. This has led to concerns that further improvements in the accuracy and availability of genetic prediction technology will lead to adverse selection and failure in insurance markets. We make three contributions to this debate. First, we develop a method to measure the amount of selection that would take place if consumers had widespread access to current-day genetic information. Second, we extend the method to estimate the amount of selection that will occur with future genetic prediction technology. Third, using a rich dataset with nearly 500,000 genotyped individuals, we apply the method to measure selection in the critical illness insurance market with both current and future genetic prediction technology. Our estimates suggest that expected improvements in genetic prediction will lead to unsustainably high levels of selection and thus threaten the viability of the market. We discuss policy implications.