Notes to Submission to the Productivity Commission Inquiry into the ...

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modifications and adaptations will be purchased in the open market or suppliedinformally through family, friends and acquaintances. As a result, only people who wouldpurchase most of the required disability goods/services in the open market would tend tobuy insurance while people who believe they can depend on informal channels will buysuch insurance only if they are very risk averse.Moral HazardMoral hazard occurs when behaviour changes after a contract is struck, with the insuredparty likely to take risks that they would not take if they were not insured. Insurersmitigate the hazard by requiring co-payments in the event of loss together with maximumlimits on the insurer’s obligation.In the context of long-term uncapped disability insurance, moral hazard would occur asinsured individuals with disabilities overstate their losses by overstating their needs -asserting that certain items (e.g. an air conditioner or mobile phone) are needed becauseof their disability, even if they are not “needed”. Thus, if the items are claimable becausethey are assessed on a schedule as sometimes necessary for people with similardisabilities, and they provide desirable services, they are likely to be claimed even thoughthey might not be ‘necessary’ for the disability of the particular claimant.The asymmetry of information has a number of implications.Firstly, it suggests that institutional arrangements may be an efficient response to fill thevacuum left by the missing private insurance market, and that such an institutionalresponse need not be only based on social justice distribution concerns. Thus, theDisability Support Pension, and legislation that minimises the additional costs of livingdue to disability may be seen as efficiency enhancing because if fills the vacuum of themissing market, as well as distribution-enhancing. To the extent that a well-designedDDA discourages discrimination and thereby helps contain increases the additional costof living due to disability, the DDA may enhance economic efficiency.Secondly, insurance market methodology may be used for measuring some of thebenefits of the DDA in a cost-benefit framework. Regulatory Impact Statementscontinually grapple with the methodological problem of measuring the benefits of DDAstandards, but have yet to come to a satisfactory resolution of the issue. The insurancemethodology suggests that the insurance premium which risk-averse individuals withoutdisability would be willing to pay, but which they don’t pay because of the missingmarket, may be used as a starting point for measuring benefit where the a regulationreduces the additional cost associated with disability. This premium may be estimated asa function of the probability that a person will acquire an impairment (fromepidemiological data) and the financial loss associated with the disability (from budgetdata). Since everyone stands some finite change of acquiring an impairment, or having achild be born with an impairment, there seems ample justification for aggregating theimplicit premium as a measure of willingness to pay.24
The willingness to pay measure also provides a benchmark for height of the impost thatpeople without disability may be willing to pay if the impost was used to finance projectsthat reduce the future costs associated with disability. Such projects may be associatedwith DDA projects such as infrastructure development to provide equal access tobuildings, transport, education, etc… Whether the impost is better paid through taxes orthe prices of goods and services is an empirical 14 and political issue that is bestdetermined on a case by case basis, while noting that the ultimate burden of a tax isalways born by consumers in the form of higher prices, or producers in the form of lowerwages and profits.Thirdly, it should perhaps be recognised that in economies with low work-forceparticipation, the additional cost due to disability may be lower than in economies withhigh work-force participation, because the more assistance is provided though informalcommunity channels and the family. This suggests that in economies such as Australia’s,with high levels of urbanisation, work-force participation (and consequentlyspecialisation of labour) and high income, the inefficiency caused by the missing marketincreases.14 It is an empirical issue because the ultimate burden of a tax depends on elasticities of demand and supply,and are independent of the nominal burden of the tax.25
Page 3: • it will take a long-time for th
Page 6 and 7: While activity-restriction and disa
Page 8 and 9: deviations away from the average. W
Page 10 and 11: individuals will trade to an effici
Page 12 and 13: Poverty caused by a lack of endowme
Page 14 and 15: The traditional economics approach
Page 16 and 17: o treats production and consumption
Page 18 and 19: • without a reliable accessible t
Page 20 and 21: such as above, the time cost is arb
Page 22 and 23: should be seen as one critical elem
Page 26 and 27: Non-Contestable Markets: Low Supply
Page 28 and 29: Unjustifiable HardshipUnjustifiable
Page 30 and 31: While a narrow short-term liquid ca
Page 32 and 33: From an analytical economics perspe
Page 34 and 35: Inefficiency of Enforcement through
Page 36 and 37: • respondents are likely to have
Page 38 and 39: that when there is improvement, the

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