Health and Democracy

By Timothy Besley and Masayuki Kudamatsu

American Economic Review, May 2006

Homeownership, Community Interactions, and Segregation

By Karla Hoff and Arijit Sen

American Economic Review, September 2005

We show that individuals with identical preferences and abilities can self-organize into communities with starkly different civic environments. Specifically, we consider a multi-community city where community quality depends upon residents' efforts to pre...

Selection in Health Insurance Markets and Its Policy Remedies

[Symposium: Health Insurance and Choice]

By Michael Geruso and Timothy J. Layton

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2017

Selection (adverse or advantageous) is the central problem that inhibits the smooth, efficient functioning of competitive health insurance markets. Even—and perhaps especially—when consumers are well-informed decision makers and insurance mark...

Incentives, Commitments, and Habit Formation in Exercise: Evidence from a Field Experiment with Workers at a Fortune-500 Company

By Heather Royer, Mark Stehr, and Justin Sydnor

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2015

Financial incentives have shown strong positive short-run effects for problematic health behaviors that likely stem from time inconsistency. However, the effects often disappear once incentive programs end. This paper analyzes the results of a large-scale...

Data Watch: Research Data in Health Economics

By William N. Evans, Helen Levy, and Kosali I. Simon

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2000

In this paper, we discuss some important data sets that can be used by economists interested in conducting research in health economics. We describe six types of data sets: health components of data sets traditionally used by economists; longitudinal surv...

Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Spending Growth

[Symposium: Constraining Healthcare Costs]

By Katherine Baicker and Dana Goldman

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2011

In this paper, we explore the role patient incentives play in slowing healthcare spending growth. Evidence suggests that while patients do indeed respond to financial incentives, cost-sharing does not uniformly improve value; rather, cost-sharing provisi...

Wearable Technologies and Health Behaviors: New Data and New Methods to Understand Population Health

By Benjamin Handel and Jonathan Kolstad

American Economic Review, May 2017

We study a randomized control trial in a large employer population of access to "wearable" technologies and the associated planning and monitoring tools on improved health behaviors (sleep and exercise). Both ITT and IV estimates based on actual plan enro...

Fetal Exposures to Toxic Releases and Infant Health

By Janet Currie and Johannes F. Schmieder

American Economic Review, May 2009

Child Health and Conflict in Côte d'Ivoire

By Camelia Minoiu and Olga Shemyakina

American Economic Review, May 2012

We examine the impact of the 2002-07 civil conflict in Côte d'Ivoire on children's health status measured by height-for-age. We use pre- and post-war survey data coupled with information on the location of violent incidents to capture exposure to th...

Return to Treatment in the Formal Health Care Sector: Evidence from Tanzania

By Achyuta Adhvaryu and Anant Nyshadham

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2015

Improving access to the formal health care sector is a primary public health goal in many low-income countries. But the returns to this access are unclear, given that the quality of care at public health facilities is often considered inadequate. We explo...

Returns to Local-Area Health Care Spending: Evidence from Health Shocks to Patients Far from Home

By Joseph J. Doyle

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2011

Health care spending varies widely across markets, and previous research finds little evidence that higher spending translates into better health outcomes. The main innovation in this paper exploits this cross-sectional variation in hospital spending in a...

Why Do Poor Children Lose Health Insurance in the SCHIP Era? The Role of Family Health

By Anne Carroll, Hope Corman, Kelly Noonan, and Nancy E. Reichman

American Economic Review, May 2007

The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation

By Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Rachel Glennerster, and Cynthia Kinnan

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2015

This paper reports results from the randomized evaluation of a group-lending microcredit program in Hyderabad, India. A lender worked in 52 randomly selected neighborhoods, leading to an 8.4 percentage point increase in takeup of microcredit. Small busine...

Health Care Usage and Health Status of Immigrant Children: The Effects of Nativity versus Citizenship

By Mónica García-Pérez

American Economic Review, May 2013

This paper addresses the relationship between child access to and use of health services, perceived health, and parental nativity. Parental region of birth is identified to include the underlying cultural differences across immigrant groups. We found that...

Health, Height, Height Shrinkage, and SES at Older Ages: Evidence from China

By Wei Huang, Xiaoyan Lei, Geert Ridder, John Strauss, and Yaohui Zhao

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2013

In this paper, we build on the literature that examines associations between height and health outcomes of the elderly. We investigate the associations of height shrinkage at older ages with socioeconomic status, finding that height shrinkage for both men...

Time Use during the Great Recession

By Mark Aguiar, Erik Hurst, and Loukas Karabarbounis

American Economic Review, August 2013

Using data from the American Time Use Survey between 2003 and 2010, we document that home production absorbs roughly 30 percent of foregone market work hours at business cycle frequencies. Leisure absorbs roughly 50 percent of foregone market work ho...

Data Watch: The World Bank's Living Standards Measurement Study Household Surveys

By Margaret E. Grosh and Paul Glewwe

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Winter 1998

Since 1985, the World Bank has been collecting household survey data in developing countries that provide a rich source of information for assessing household welfare, understanding household behavior, and evaluating the impact of government policies. Thi...

Moving Up the Energy Ladder: The Effect of an Increase in Economic Well-Being on the Fuel Consumption Choices of the Poor in India

By Rema Hanna and Paulina Oliva

American Economic Review, May 2015

Rising household wealth may potentially impact both total fuel consumption and fuel-type composition, resulting in significant health and environmental implications. Using data from a field experiment in India, we explore the effects of a transfer program...

Do Conditional Cash Transfers Improve Child Health? Evidence from PROGRESA's Control Randomized Experiment

By Paul Gertler

American Economic Review, May 2004

Charity Care, Risk Pooling, and the Decline in Private Health Insurance

By Michael Chernew, David Cutler, and Patricia Seliger Keenan

American Economic Review, May 2005