In the US, health insurance is linked to employment. The tax code treats health insurance premiums preferentially for employers, but not individuals. We show that this regressive policy reduces talent mis-allocation in two ways: (i) The larger tax benefit to those with higher health risk and managerial talent, conditional on being entrepreneurs, alters the incentive to be an entrepreneur. (ii) This enlarges the tax base, which reduces the effective tax rate, and increases wage and capital income. Our general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents shows that the subsidy can increase welfare, with a maximum gain of 0.46% in consumption equivalent variation.

在美国，健康保险与就业相关。税法对雇主而非个人优先对待健康保险费。我们表明，这种递减政策通过两种方式减少了人才配置错误：（i）对于具有较高健康风险和管理才能的人，较大的税收优惠以企业家身份为条件，从而改变了成为企业家的动机。（ii）这扩大了税基，降低了有效税率，并增加了工资和资本收入。我们的具有异质因素的一般均衡模型表明，补贴可以增加福利，消费当量变化的最大收益为0.46％。