The Health of Democracies during the Pandemic: Results from a Randomized Survey Experiment

By Marcella Alsan, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, Minjeong Joyce Kim, Stefanie Stantcheva, and David Y. Yang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Concerns have been raised about the "demise of democracy," possibly accelerated by pandemic-related restrictions. Using a survey experiment involving 8,206 respondents from 5 Western democracies, we find that subjects randomly exposed to information regar...

A Model of Demand for Health and Caregiving Incorporating Marriage Markets

By Shoshana Grossbard and Lorena Hakak

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

According to the Grossman model, the demand for health-related goods or services varies with the costs of their substitutes produced in the household. This paper contributes to the literature on the demand for health-related products and home care by also...

The Impact of Large-Scale Social Media Advertising Campaigns on COVID-19 Vaccination: Evidence from Two Randomized Controlled Trials

By Lisa Ho, Emily Breza, Abhijit Banerjee, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Fatima C. Stanford, Renato Fior, Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham, Kelly Holland, Emily Hoppe, Louis- Maël Jean, Lucy Ogbu-Nwobodo, Benjamin A. Olken, Carlos Torres, Pierre-Luc Vautrey, Erica Warner, Esther Duflo, and Marcella Alsan

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

COVID-19 vaccines are widely available in wealthy countries, yet many remain unvaccinated. We report on two studies (United States and France) with millions of Facebook users that tested two strategies central to vaccination outreach: health professionals...

Do Health Disparities Narrow with Pollution Disparities? Trends from California

By Danae Hernandez-Cortes and Kyle C. Meng

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

Pollution concentrations (PM2.5) in the United States have fallen in recent decades. Despite these improvements, disparities in concentrations between racial/ethnic groups persist. We combine administrative data on the universe of emergency roo...

Optimal Contracting with Altruistic Agents: Medicare Payments for Dialysis Drugs

By Martin Gaynor, Nirav Mehta, and Seth Richards-Shubik

American Economic Review, June 2023

We study health-care provider agency and optimal payments, considering an expensive medication for dialysis patients. Using Medicare claims data we estimate a structural model of treatment decisions, in which providers differ in their altruism and margina...

The Impact of Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Infrastructure, Health, and Education

By Anaïs Fabre and Stéphane Straub

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2023

This paper summarizes what is known about the impact of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the three sectors where they have been used intensively: infrastructure (energy, transport, water and sanitation, and telecommunications), education, and healt...

Financial Regulation: Lessons from the Recent Financial Crises

By Takeo Hoshi

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2011

The experiences of the financial crises in the United States recently and in Japan in the 1990s suggest two lessons for future financial regulations. First, the lack of an orderly resolution mechanism for large and complex financial institutions created ...

Epidemics, Inequality, and Poverty in Preindustrial and Early Industrial Times

By Guido Alfani

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2022

Recent research has explored the distributive consequences of major historical epidemics, and the current crisis triggered by COVID-19 prompts us to look at the past for insights about how pandemics can affect inequalities in income, wealth, and health....

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic and Its Lessons for COVID-19

By Brian Beach, Karen Clay, and Martin Saavedra

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2022

This article reviews the global health and economic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic, with a particular focus on topics that have seen a renewed interest because of COVID-19. We begin by providing an overview of key contextual and epidemiologic...

Modern Infectious Diseases: Macroeconomic Impacts and Policy Responses

By David E. Bloom, Michael Kuhn, and Klaus Prettner

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2022

We discuss and review literature on the macroeconomic effects of epidemics and pandemics since the late twentieth century. First, we cover the role of health in driving economic growth and well-being and discuss standard frameworks for assessing the eco...

Reconceptualizing the path to universal health insurance

[Research Highlight]

June 07, 2023

Mark Shepard discusses the limitations of a “market failures” approach to achieving universal health insurance coverage in the United States.

Social Connectedness: Measurement, Determinants, and Effects

By Michael Bailey, Rachel Cao, Theresa Kuchler, Johannes Stroebel, and Arlene Wong

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2018

Social networks can shape many aspects of social and economic activity: migration and trade, job-seeking, innovation, consumer preferences and sentiment, public health, social mobility, and more. In turn, social networks themselves are associated with geo...

Amy Finkelstein: 2012 John Bates Clark Medalist

By Jonathan Levin and James Poterba

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Fall 2012

Amy Finkelstein is the 2012 recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal from the American Economic Association. The core concerns of Amy's research program have been insurance markets and health care. She has addressed whether asymmetric information leads to ...

A Review of Angus Deaton's The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality

By David N. Weil

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2015

This book explores the relationship between the material standard of living and health, both across countries and over time. Above all, Deaton is interested in the question of whether income growth contributes significantly to better health. His answer is...

The Great Escape: A Review of Robert Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100

By Angus Deaton

Journal of Economic Literature, March 2006

In this essay, I review Robert Fogel's The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100, which is concerned with the past, present, and future of human health. Fogel's work places great emphasis on nutrition, not only for the history of he...

Economic Conditions Early in Life and Individual Mortality

By Gerard J. van den Berg, Maarten Lindeboom, and France Portrait

American Economic Review, March 2006

We analyze the effect of economic conditions early in life on individual mortality rate later in life, using business cycle conditions early in life as an exogenous indicator. Individual records from Dutch registers of birth, marriage, and death, covering...

Are Banks Really Special? New Evidence from the FDIC-Induced Failure of Healthy Banks

By Adam B. Ashcraft

American Economic Review, December 2005

Recent bank failures are followed by significant and permanent negative declines in real county income. These declines are larger for small failures than for large failures per dollar of assets, are larger for bank failures than thrift failures, and are l...

Distinguished Lecture on Economics in Government: Strengthening the Economy by Rethinking the Role of Federal and State Governments

By Alice M. Rivlin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 1991

This lecture brings together two subjects that are not often discussed together: national economic policy and the structure of American federalism. My thesis is that the policies needed to improve the health of the U.S. economy over the next decade or two...

Adverse Selection in Low-Income Health Insurance Markets: Evidence from an RCT in Pakistan

By Torben Fischer, Markus Frölich, and Andreas Landmann

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2023

We present robust evidence on adverse selection in hospitalization insurance for low-income individuals that received first-time access to insurance. A large randomized control trial from Pakistan allows us to separate adverse selection from moral hazard,...

What Difference Does a Health Plan Make? Evidence from Random Plan Assignment in Medicaid

By Michael Geruso, Timothy J. Layton, and Jacob Wallace

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, July 2023

Exploiting the random assignment of Medicaid beneficiaries to managed care plans, we find substantial plan-specific spending effects despite plans having identical cost sharing. Enrollment in the lowest-spending plan reduces spending by at least 25 percen...