The Causal Effects of Place on Health and Longevity

[Symposium: Geographic Disparities in Health]

By Tatyana Deryugina and David Molitor

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2021

Life expectancy varies substantially across local regions within a country, raising conjectures that place of residence affects health. However, population sorting and other confounders make it difficult to disentangle the effects of place on health from ...

When Innovation Goes Wrong: Technological Regress and the Opioid Epidemic

By David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2021

The fourfold increase in opioid deaths between 2000 and 2017 rivals even the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis for America. Why did it happen? Measures of demand for pain relief—physical pain and despair—are high and in many cases rising, but their...

Neighborhoods Matter: Assessing the Evidence for Place Effects

By Eric Chyn and Lawrence F. Katz

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2021

How does one's place of residence affect individual behavior and long-run outcomes? Understanding neighborhood and place effects has been a leading question for social scientists during the past half-century. Recent empirical studies using experimental an...

Inside the Box: Safety, Health, and Isolation in Prison

[Symposium: Criminal Justice]

By Bruce Western

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2021

A large social science research literature examines the effects of prisons on crime and socioeconomic inequality, but the penal institution itself is often a black box overlooked in the analysis of its effects. This paper examines prisons and their role i...

The recovery of Southern wealth after the Civil War

[Research Highlight]

November 02, 2021

Leah Boustan discusses how White slaveholding families in the US South rebuilt their fortunes after emancipation.

The efficiency of outsourcing

[Research Highlight]

November 09, 2021

Does the government save by hiring private contractors for publicly funded projects?

Divergences in life expectancy across US states

[Research Highlight]

November 18, 2021

Christopher Foote and Ellen Meara discuss rising geographic disparities in US mortality.

Getting the help they need

[Research Highlight]

November 17, 2021

How did cuts to special education in Texas affect the long-run outcomes for students?

Long-Term Effects of the Targeting the Ultra Poor Program

By Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Garima Sharma

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2021

This paper studies the long-run effects of a "big-push" program providing a large asset transfer to the poorest Indian households. In a randomized controlled trial that follows these households over ten years, we find positive effects on consumption (0.6 ...

Reimagining public safety research

[Research Highlight]

November 19, 2021

Yale sociologist Monica Bell talks about why economists must change the way they study police.

Work and childcare during the pandemic

[Research Highlight]

August 27, 2021

Stefania Albanesi discusses the effects of the COVID-19 recession on the US labor market.

The long-run benefits of public preschool

[Research Highlight]

December 15, 2021

Martha Bailey discusses the impact of Head Start on educational attainment and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood.

When Should There Be Vertical Choice in Health Insurance Markets?

By Victoria R. Marone and Adrienne Sabety

American Economic Review, January 2022

We study the welfare effects of offering choice over coverage levels—"vertical choice"—in regulated health insurance markets. We emphasize that heterogeneity in efficient coverage level is not sufficient to motivate choice. When premiums cannot reflec...

Making healthy practices habitual

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An experiment in rural India boosted handwashing through social and financial rewards.

Inoculating adolescents, protecting the public

[Research Highlight]

February 26, 2019

The AEA interviews Emily Lawler about vaccination mandates and their spillover effects.

Hospital Network Competition and Adverse Selection: Evidence from the Massachusetts Health Insurance Exchange

By Mark Shepard

American Economic Review, February 2022

Health insurers increasingly compete on their networks of medical providers. Using data from Massachusetts's insurance exchange, I find substantial adverse selection against plans covering the most prestigious and expensive "star" hospitals. I highlight a...

A Satellite Account for Health in the United States

By David M. Cutler, Kaushik Ghosh, Kassandra L. Messer, Trivellore Raghunathan, Allison B. Rosen, and Susan T. Stewart

American Economic Review, February 2022

This paper develops a satellite account for the US health sector and measures productivity growth in health care for the elderly population between 1999 and 2012. We measure the change in medical spending and health outcomes for a comprehensive set of 80 ...

Immigration politics

[Research Highlight]

January 28, 2022

Anna Maria Mayda discusses how the skill level of foreign workers influences native voters in the United States.

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act: Evidence from California's Hospital Sector

By Mark Duggan, Atul Gupta, and Emilie Jackson

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

We exploit changes in the discontinuity in health insurance coverage at age 65 induced by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act to examine effects on coverage, hospital use, and patient health. We then link these changes to effects on hospital fin...

Dominated Options in Health Insurance Plans

By Chenyuan Liu and Justin Sydnor

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, February 2022

Prior research documents that there are sometimes dominated options in health plan menus, but is that common? We analyze Kaiser Family Foundation data on health plans that firms offer to their employees. For firms offering both a high-deductible and lower...