The Price of Labor: Evaluating the Impact of Eliminating User Fees on Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes

By Anne Fitzpatrick

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2018

Since 2001, several sub-Saharan African countries have eliminated user fees for childbirth. Although intended to improve maternal and infant health outcomes, service quality also fell as facilities became overburdened. In this paper I combine DHS surveys ...

Long-Run Effects of Temporary Incentives on Medical Care Productivity

By Pablo A. Celhay, Paul J. Gertler, Paula Giovagnoli, and Christel Vermeersch

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2019

We show that costs of adjustment as opposed to low perceived value may explain why improved quality care practices diffuse slowly in the medical industry. Using a randomized field experiment conducted in Argentina, we find that temporary financial incenti...

A Review Essay on Howard Bodenhorn's The Color Factor: The Economics of African-American Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century South

By Allison Shertzer

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2018

In The Color Factor: The Economics of African-American Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century South, Howard Bodenhorn investigates the origins, health, and socioeconomic performance of mixed-race people in the antebellum Southern United States. The c...

Life-Cycle Consumption Patterns at Older Ages in the United States and the United Kingdom: Can Medical Expenditures Explain the Difference?

By James Banks, Richard Blundell, Peter Levell, and James P. Smith

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2019

This paper documents significantly steeper declines in nondurable expenditures at older ages in the United Kingdom compared to the United States, in spite of income paths being similar. Several possible causes are explored, including different employment ...

Health Care Spending and Utilization in Public and Private Medicare

By Vilsa Curto, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, Jonathan Levin, and Jay Bhattacharya

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2019

We compare health care spending in public and private Medicare using newly available claims data from Medicare Advantage (MA) insurers. MA insurer revenues are 30 percent higher than their health care spending. Adjusting for enrollee mix, health care spen...

Should We Tax Sugar-Sweetened Beverages? An Overview of Theory and Evidence

By Hunt Allcott, Benjamin B. Lockwood, and Dmitry Taubinsky

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2019

Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages are growing in popularity and have generated an active public debate. Are they a good idea? If so, how high should they be? Are such taxes regressive? People in the United States and some other countries consume remark...

Adverse Selection in ACA Exchange Markets: Evidence from Colorado

By Matthew Panhans

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2019

This study tests for adverse selection in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance exchanges established in 2014 and quantifies the welfare consequences. Using a new statewide dataset of medical claims from Colorado, I use plausibly exogenous premiu...

The Impacts of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work on Income and Health: Experimental Evidence from Ethiopia

By Christopher Blattman and Stefan Dercon

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2018

Working with five Ethiopian firms, we randomized applicants to an industrial job offer, an "entrepreneurship" program of $300 plus business training, or control status. Industrial jobs offered more and steadier hours but low wages and risky conditions. Th...

Bringing Satellite-Based Air Quality Estimates Down to Earth

By Meredith Fowlie, Edward Rubin, and Reed Walker

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2019

We use state-of-the-art, satellite-based PM 2.5 data products to assess the extent to which the Environmental Protection Agency's existing, monitor-based measurements over- or underestimate true exposure to PM 2.5 pollution. Treating satellite-based estim...

Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland

By Marcella Alsan, Owen Garrick, and Grant Graziani

American Economic Review, December 2019

We study the effect of physician workforce diversity on the demand for preventive care among African American men. In an experiment in Oakland, California, we randomize black men to black or non-black male medical doctors. We use a two-stage design, measu...

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

By Petra Persson and Maya Rossin-Slater

American Economic Review, April 2018

Persson and Rossin-Slater (2018) find that prenatal exposure to family ruptures affects childhood and adult mental health, as well as infant physical health. We compare children whose relatives die within 280 days post-conception to children whose relativ...

Equilibrium Provider Networks: Bargaining and Exclusion in Health Care Markets

By Kate Ho and Robin S. Lee

American Economic Review, February 2019

We evaluate the consequences of narrow hospital networks in commercial health care markets. We develop a bargaining solution, "Nash-in-Nash with Threat of Replacement," that captures insurers' incentives to exclude, and combine it with California data and...

Family Health Behaviors

By Itzik Fadlon and Torben Heien Nielsen

American Economic Review, September 2019

We study how health behaviors are shaped through family spillovers. We leverage administrative data to identify the effects of health shocks on family members' consumption of preventive care and health-related behaviors, constructing counterfactuals for a...

The Local Economic and Welfare Consequences of Hydraulic Fracturing

By Alexander W. Bartik, Janet Currie, Michael Greenstone, and Christopher R. Knittel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2019

Exploiting geological variation and timing in the initiation of hydraulic fracturing, we find that fracking leads to sharp increases in oil and gas recovery and improvements in a wide set of economic indicators. There is also evidence of deterioration in ...

Medical Care Spending and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Workers' Compensation Reforms

By David Powell and Seth Seabury

American Economic Review, October 2018

Medical care represents an important component of workers' compensation benefits with the potential to improve health and post- injury labor outcomes, but little is known about the relationship between medical care spending and the labor outcomes of injur...

Strategic Formulary Design in Medicare Part D Plans

By Kurt Lavetti and Kosali Simon

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2018

The design of Medicare Part D causes most beneficiaries to receive fragmented health insurance, with drug and medical coverage separated. Fragmentation is potentially inefficient since separate insurers optimize over only one component of healthcare spend...

Incidental Bequests and the Choice to Self-Insure Late-Life Risks

By Lee M. Lockwood

American Economic Review, September 2018

Despite facing significant uncertainty about their lifespans and health care costs, most retirees do not buy annuities or long-term care insurance. In this paper, I find that retirees' saving and insurance choices are highly inconsistent with standard lif...

Diabetes and Diet: Purchasing Behavior Change in Response to Health Information

By Emily Oster

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2018

Individuals with obesity and related conditions are often reluctant to change their diet. Evaluating the details of this reluctance is hampered by limited data. I use household scanner data to estimate food purchase response to a diagnosis of diabetes. I ...

Externalities and Taxation of Supplemental Insurance: A Study of Medicare and Medigap

By Marika Cabral and Neale Mahoney

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2019

Most health insurance uses cost-sharing to reduce excess utilization. Supplemental insurance can blunt the impact of this cost-sharing, increasing utilization and exerting a negative externality on the primary insurer. This paper estimates the effect of p...

Life after Lead: Effects of Early Interventions for Children Exposed to Lead

By Stephen B. Billings and Kevin T. Schnepel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2018

Lead pollution is consistently linked to cognitive and behavioral impairments, yet little is known about the benefits of public health interventions for children exposed to lead. This paper estimates the long-term impacts of early-life interventions (e.g....