The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction

By Tatyana Deryugina, Garth Heutel, Nolan H. Miller, David Molitor, and Julian Reif

American Economic Review, December 2019

We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new app...

How Does Household Income Affect Child Personality Traits and Behaviors?

By Randall Akee, William Copeland, E. Jane Costello, and Emilia Simeonova

American Economic Review, March 2018

We examine the effects of a quasi-experimental unconditional household income transfer on child emotional and behavioral health and personality traits. Using longitudinal data, we find that there are large beneficial effects on children's emotional and be...

Family Ruptures, Stress, and the Mental Health of the Next Generation

By Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater

American Economic Review, April 2018

This paper studies how in utero exposure to maternal stress from family ruptures affects later mental health. We find that prenatal exposure to the death of a maternal relative increases take-up of ADHD medications during childhood and anti-anxiety and de...

The Changing Face of Debt and Financial Fragility at Older Ages

By Annamaria Lusardi, Olivia S. Mitchell, and Noemi Oggero

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

We investigate changes in older individuals' financial fragility as they stand on the verge of retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we compare how debt has changed for successive cohorts of people age 56–61. Our analysis sh...

Regulating Markups in US Health Insurance

By Steve Cicala, Ethan M. J. Lieber, and Victoria Marone

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019

A health insurer's Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) is the share of premiums spent on medical claims, or the inverse markup over average claims cost. The Affordable Care Act introduced minimum MLR provisions for all health insurance sold in fully insured commerci...

The Returns to a Large Community College Program: Evidence from Admissions Lotteries

By Michel Grosz

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2020

This paper estimates the labor market returns to the associate's degree in nursing (ADN), which is one of the most popular community college programs. I use student-level academic and earnings records across two decades for all community college student...

The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions

By Carlos Dobkin, Amy Finkelstein, Raymond Kluender, and Matthew J. Notowidigdo

American Economic Review, February 2018

We use an event study approach to examine the economic consequences of hospital admissions for adults in two datasets: survey data from the Health and Retirement Study, and hospitalization data linked to credit reports. For non-elderly adults with health ...

Does Managed Care Widen Infant Health Disparities? Evidence from Texas Medicaid

By Ilyana Kuziemko, Katherine Meckel, and Maya Rossin-Slater

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2018

Medicaid programs increasingly finance competing, capitated managed care plans rather than administering fee-for-service (FFS) programs. We study how the transition from FFS to managed care affects high- and low-cost infants (blacks and Hispanics, respect...

Screening in Contract Design: Evidence from the ACA Health Insurance Exchanges

By Michael Geruso, Timothy Layton, and Daniel Prinz

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2019

We study insurers' use of prescription drug formularies to screen consumers in the ACA Health Insurance exchanges. We begin by showing that exchange risk adjustment and reinsurance succeed in neutralizing selection incentives for most, but not all, consum...

The Burgeoning Health Care Needs of Aging Prisoners

By Hessam Bavafa and Anita Mukherjee

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

We estimate the increasing health care needs of American inmates by combining data on inmate demographics and national health trends. Decades of harsh punishment combined with demographic shifts have led to a "greying" prison population that is a source o...

Mind the Gap: A Review of The Health Gap: The Challenge of an Unequal World by Sir Michael Marmot

By Adriana Lleras-Muney

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2018

The Health Gap documents the large and persistent health gaps that exist across and within relatively rich countries today. Marmot argues that in developed countries, poor health does not cause low incomes; rather, low socioeconomic status leads ...

Family Disadvantage and the Gender Gap in Behavioral and Educational Outcomes

By David Autor, David Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, Jeffrey Roth, and Melanie Wasserman

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2019

Boys born to disadvantaged families have higher rates of disciplinary problems, lower achievement scores, and fewer high school completions than girls from comparable backgrounds. Using birth certificates matched to schooling records for Florida children ...

Health Care Access, Costs, and Treatment Dynamics: Evidence from In Vitro Fertilization

By Barton H. Hamilton, Emily Jungheim, Brian McManus, and Juan Pantano

American Economic Review, December 2018

We study public policies designed to improve access and reduce costs for In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). High out-of-pocket prices can deter potential patients from IVF, while active patients have an incentive to risk costly high-order pregnancies to improv...

Four Years Later: Insurance Coverage and Access to Care Continue to Diverge between ACA Medicaid Expansion and Non-Expansion States

By Sarah Miller and Laura R. Wherry

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

This paper evaluates the impact of the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions four years after implementation using data from the 2010-2017 National Health Interview Survey. We find that low-income adults in states that implemented the Medicaid expansion...

Rationalizations and Mistakes: Optimal Policy with Normative Ambiguity

By Jacob Goldin and Daniel Reck

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Behavior that appears to violate neoclassical assumptions can often be rationalized by incorporating an optimization cost into decision-makers' utility functions. Depending on the setting, these costs may reflect either an actual welfare loss for the deci...

Job Search Periods for Welfare Applicants: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

By Jonneke Bolhaar, Nadine Ketel, and Bas van der Klaauw

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2019

We combine a randomized experiment with administrative data to study the effects of mandatory job search periods in the Dutch welfare system. Job search periods postpone the first welfare benefits payment and encourage applicants to start searching for jo...

Physician Beliefs and Patient Preferences: A New Look at Regional Variation in Health Care Spending

By David Cutler, Jonathan S. Skinner, Ariel Dora Stern, and David Wennberg

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2019

There is considerable controversy about the causes of regional variations in health care expenditures. Using vignettes from patient and physician surveys linked to fee-for-service Medicare expenditures, this study asks whether patient demand-side factors ...

Trade Liberalization and Mortality: Evidence from US Counties

By Justin R. Pierce and Peter K. Schott

American Economic Review: Insights, March 2020

We investigate the impact of a large and persistent economic shock on "deaths of despair." We find that areas more exposed to a plausibly exogenous change in international trade policy exhibit relative increases in fatal drug overdoses, specifically among...

Reducing Child Mortality in the Last Mile: Experimental Evidence on Community Health Promoters in Uganda

By Martina Björkman Nyqvist, Andrea Guariso, Jakob Svensson, and David Yanagizawa-Drott

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2019

The delivery of basic health products and services remains abysmal in many parts of the world where child mortality is high. This paper shows the results from a large-scale randomized evaluation of a novel approach to health care delivery. In randomly sel...

Do Larger Health Insurance Subsidies Benefit Patients or Producers? Evidence from Medicare Advantage

By Marika Cabral, Michael Geruso, and Neale Mahoney

American Economic Review, August 2018

A central question in the debate over privatized Medicare is whether increased government payments to private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans generate lower premiums for consumers or higher profits for producers. Using difference-in-differences variation br...