The Causal Effects of Lockdown Policies on Health and Macroeconomic Outcomes

By Jonas E. Arias, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez, and Minchul Shin

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, July 2023

We assess the causal impact of pandemic-induced lockdowns on health and macroeconomic outcomes and measure the trade-off between containing the spread of a pandemic and economic activity. To do so, we estimate an epidemiological model with time-varying pa...

Economic questions raised by Alzheimer's disease

[Research Highlight]

July 05, 2023

Corina Mommaerts discusses what economists can do to help policymakers address issues surrounding Alzheimer’s disease.

What Can Economics Say about Alzheimer's Disease?

By Amitabh Chandra, Courtney Coile, and Corina Mommaerts

Journal of Economic Literature, June 2023

Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects one in ten people aged 65 or older and is the most expensive disease in the United States. We describe the central economic questions raised by AD. Although there is overlap with the economics of aging and health, the de...

Common Practice: Spillovers from Medicare on Private Health Care

By Michael L. Barnett, Andrew Olenski, and Adam Sacarny

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2023

Efforts to raise US health-care productivity have proceeded slowly, potentially due to the fragmentation of payment across insurers. Each insurer's efforts to improve care could influence how doctors practice for other insurers, leading to unvalued extern...

The Impact of Organizational Boundaries on Health Care Coordination and Utilization

By Leila Agha, Keith Marzilli Ericson, and Xiaoxi Zhao

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, August 2023

We measure organizational concentration—the distribution of a patient's health care across organizations—to examine how firm boundaries affect health care efficiency. First, when patients move to regions where outpatient visits are typically concentra...

Compensating Wage Differentials in Labor Markets: Empirical Challenges and Applications

By Kurt Lavetti

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

The model of compensating wage differentials is among the cornerstone models of equilibrium wage determination in labor economics. However, empirical estimates of compensating differentials have faced persistent credibility challenges. This article summ...

What Can Historically Black Colleges and Universities Teach about Improving Higher Education Outcomes for Black Students?

By Gregory N. Price and Angelino C. G. Viceisza

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Summer 2023

Historically Black colleges and universities are institutions that were established prior to 1964 with the principal mission of educating Black Americans. In this essay, we focus on two main issues. We start by examining how Black College students perform...

Worth Your Weight: Experimental Evidence on the Benefits of Obesity in Low-Income Countries

By Elisa Macchi

American Economic Review, September 2023

I study the economic value of obesity—a status symbol in poor countries associated with raised health risks. Randomizing decision-makers in Kampala, Uganda to view weight-manipulated portraits, I find that obesity is perceived as a reliable signal of we...

Reducing Frictions in Health Care Access: The ActionHealthNYC Experiment for Undocumented Immigrants

By Adrienne Sabety, Jonathan Gruber, Jin Yung Bae, and Rishi Sood

American Economic Review: Insights, September 2023

In 2016, New York City designed and implemented an intervention to reduce frictions in accessing safety net care: randomly making initial primary care appointments for 2,428 undocumented immigrants. We leverage a novel survey-administrative data linkage t...

The Enduring Effects of Racial Discrimination on Income and Health

By Shari J. Eli, Trevon D. Logan, and Boriana Miloucheva

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2023

We investigate the effect of income on the long-standing racial mortality gap in the United States by using evidence from White and Black Civil War veterans who went on to receive postwar pensions. To circumvent endogeneity, we propose an exogenous source...

Improving Regulatory Effectiveness through Better Targeting: Evidence from OSHA

By Matthew S. Johnson, David I. Levine, and Michael W. Toffel

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2023

We study how a regulator can best target inspections. Our case study is a US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) program that randomly allocated some inspections. On average, each inspection led to 2.4 (9 percent) fewer serious injuries o...

Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis

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

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2023

We study people's willingness to trade off civil liberties for increased health security in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by deploying representative surveys involving around 550,000 responses across 15 countries. We document significant heterogene...

Temporal Instability of Risk Preference among the Poor: Evidence from Payday Cycles

By Mika Akesaka, Peter Eibich, Chie Hanaoka, and Hitoshi Shigeoka

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, October 2023

The poor live paycheck to paycheck and are repeatedly exposed to strong cyclical income fluctuations. We investigate whether such income fluctuations affect their risk preference. If risk preference temporarily changes around payday, optimal decisions mad...

Is There a VA Advantage? Evidence from Dually Eligible Veterans

By David C. Chan, David Card, and Lowell Taylor

American Economic Review, November 2023

We study public versus private provision of health care for veterans aged 65 and older who may receive care provided by the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and in private hospitals financed by Medicare. Utilizing the ambulance design of Doyle et al...

Public and Private Options in Practice: The Military Health System

By Michael D. Frakes, Jonathan Gruber, and Timothy Justicz

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

Recent debates over health care reform, including in the context of the Military Health System (MHS) and Veterans Administration, highlight the dispute between public and private provision of health care services. Using novel data on childbirth claims fro...

Trading rights for health security during the pandemic

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Did the willingness to sacrifice civil liberties vary according to income?

Shifting to work from home

[Research Highlight]

November 14, 2023

How did work-from-home arrangements in the United States evolve during and after the pandemic?

Dishonesty and Public Employment

By Guillermo Cruces, Martín A. Rossi, and Ernesto Schargrodsky

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2023

We exploit a natural experiment to study the causal link between dishonest behavior and public employment. When military conscription was mandatory in Argentina, eligibility was determined by both a lottery and a medical examination. To avoid conscription...

The Effects of Import Competition on Unionization

By John S. Ahlquist and Mitch Downey

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2023

We study direct and indirect effects of Chinese import competition on union membership in the United States, 1990–2014. Import competition in manufacturing induced a modest decline in unionization within manufacturing industries. The magnitude is small ...

Global trade and unionization

[Research Highlight]

December 01, 2023

What role did the surge in China imports have on already declining union rates?