Health Recommendations and Selection in Health Behaviors

By Emily Oster

American Economic Review: Insights, June 2020

Consider a case in which a new research finding links a health behavior with good health outcomes. A possible consequence is take-up of this behavior among individuals who engage in other positive health behaviors. If this occurs, later analyses of observ...

Rethinking racial discrimination

[Research Highlight]

June 19, 2020

Harvard professor Mario Small discusses how sociology can help economics diversify its perspective.

The Impact of Information Technology on the Diffusion of New Pharmaceuticals

By Kenneth J. Arrow, L. Kamran Bilir, and Alan Sorensen

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2020

Do information differences across US physicians contribute to treatment disparities? This paper uses a unique new dataset to evaluate how changes in physician access to a decision-relevant drug database affect prescribing decisions. Our results indicate d...

What Is the Added Value of Preschool for Poor Children? Long-Term and Intergenerational Impacts and Interactions with an Infant Health Intervention

By Maya Rossin-Slater and Miriam Wüst

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2020

We study the impact of preschool targeted at children from low-income families over the life cycle and across generations, and examine its interaction with an infant health intervention. Using Danish administrative data with variation in the timing of pro...

Regulation by Shaming: Deterrence Effects of Publicizing Violations of Workplace Safety and Health Laws

By Matthew S. Johnson

American Economic Review, June 2020

Publicizing firms' socially undesirable actions may enhance firms' incentives to avoid such actions. In 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) began issuing press releases about facilities that violated safety and health regulation...

Regulation by shaming

[Research Highlight]

June 18, 2020

Publicizing safety violations at one company has ripple effects that lead to improvements at other workplaces.

Promoting smaller families

[Research Highlight]

June 25, 2020

Fertility rates are declining in poor countries. Family planning campaigns are part of the reason why.

Price-Linked Subsidies and Imperfect Competition in Health Insurance

By Sonia Jaffe and Mark Shepard

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2020

Policymakers subsidizing health insurance often face uncertainty about future market prices. We study the implications of one policy response: linking subsidies to prices to target a given postsubsidy premium. We show that these price-linked subsidies wea...

Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Utilization in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design

By Hsing-Wen Han, Hsien-Ming Lien, and Tzu-Ting Yang

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2020

This paper estimates the price elasticity of healthcare utilization in early childhood. We employ a regression discontinuity design by exploiting a subsidy that reduces patient cost-sharing for children under age 3 in Taiwan. Using longitudinal medical cl...

Facts and Myths about Misperceptions

By Brendan Nyhan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2020

Misperceptions threaten to warp mass opinion and public policy on controversial issues in politics, science, and health. What explains the prevalence and persistence of these false and unsupported beliefs, which seem to be genuinely held by many people?...

Losing Prosociality in the Quest for Talent? Sorting, Selection, and Productivity in the Delivery of Public Services

By Nava Ashraf, Oriana Bandiera, Edward Davenport, and Scott S. Lee

American Economic Review, May 2020

We embed a field experiment in a nationwide recruitment drive for a new health care position in Zambia to test whether career benefits attract talent at the expense of prosocial motivation. In line with common wisdom, offering career opportunities attract...

Finding the best person for the job

[Research Highlight]

August 13, 2020

Does offering more career advancement attract less motivated workers?

A century of women’s enfranchisement

[Research Highlight]

August 12, 2020

Elizabeth Cascio discusses how generational change has contributed to the expanding political gap between men and women in the US.

The Long-Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty: Nine-Year Evidence from Uganda's Youth Opportunities Program

By Christopher Blattman, Nathan Fiala, and Sebastian Martinez

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2020

In 2008, Uganda gave 400 USD per person to thousands of young people to help them start skilled trades, work more, and raise incomes. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised work by 17 percent and earnings by 38 percent (Blattman, Fi...

You don’t have to put on the red-light cameras

[Research Highlight]

September 10, 2020

Does monitoring traffic intersections make them safer?

Medical cost sharing for kids

[Page]

How much do price hikes decrease healthcare expenditures on children?

Healthcare Demand under Simple Prices: Evidence from Tiered Hospital Networks

By Elena Prager

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2020

This paper shows that consumers respond to prices for complex healthcare when they can easily assess out-of-pocket prices. Healthcare cost containment efforts increasingly incentivize price shopping despite a dearth of evidence that this steers consumers ...

The Elasticity of Science

By Kyle Myers

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2020

This paper identifies the degree to which scientists are willing to change the direction of their work in exchange for resources. Data from the National Institutes of Health are used to estimate how scientists respond to targeted funding opportunities. In...

Quietly preventing a bank run

[Research Highlight]

September 23, 2020

Should policymakers maintain anonymity for financial institutions who need a bailout during a crisis?

Bureaucratic water fights

[Research Highlight]

October 07, 2020

Resolving tension between state and local authorities in Brazil boosted needed investments in water and sanitation services.