The Long-Term Effects of Income for At-Risk Infants: Evidence from Supplemental Security Income

By Amelia Hawkins, Christopher Hollrah, Sarah Miller, Laura R. Wherry, Gloria Aldana, and Mitchell Wong

American Economic Review, September 2025

The Supplemental Security Income program uses a birth weight cutoff at 1,200 grams to determine eligibility. Using birth certificates linked to administrative records, we find low-income families of infants born just below the cutoff receive higher monthl...

Reviewing residential segregation

[Research Highlight]

September 10, 2025

Trevon Logan and John Parman discuss the meaning of segregation and how it has shaped US history.

Racial Residential Segregation in the United States

By Trevon D. Logan and John M. Parman

Journal of Economic Literature, September 2025

Residential segregation is a central factor in explaining socioeconomic gaps across race and ethnicity in the United States. Place of residence directly impacts access to schools, jobs, and health care. There is an ever-evolving literature across the soci...

Medical Technology and Life Expectancy: Evidence from the Antitoxin Treatment of Diphtheria

By Philipp Ager, Casper W. Hansen, and Peter Z. Lin

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We examine the impact of the free supply of diphtheria antitoxin, the first effective medical treatment for an infectious disease, on the historical health transition in Massachusetts. Using newly collected municipality-level data on the distribution of...

Reexamining the Contribution of Public Health Efforts to the Decline in Urban Mortality

By D. Mark Anderson, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Daniel I. Rees

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2022

Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900⁠–⁠1940, we explore the effects of municipal-level public health efforts that were viewed as critical in the fight against foodborne and waterborne diseases. In addition to studying intervent...

Reexamining the Contribution of Public Health Efforts to the Decline in Urban Mortality: Comment

By David M. Cutler and Grant Miller

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2022

We address points raised by Anderson, Charles, and Rees (2022), which comments on our prior work. After correcting unambiguous data mistakes, our revised estimates suggest that municipal water disinfection (filtration) explains 38 percent of the total mor...

Reexamining the Contribution of Public Health Efforts to the Decline in Urban Mortality: Reply

By D. Mark Anderson, Kerwin Kofi Charles, and Daniel I. Rees

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2022

This rejoinder is written in response to the comment by Cutler and Miller (hereafter CM) on our paper, "Reexamining the Contribution of Public Health Efforts to the Decline in Urban Mortality" (Anderson, Charles, and Rees 2022). In their comment, CM ackno...

Cooking, Health, and Daily Exposure to Pollution Spikes

By Susanna B. Berkouwer and Joshua T. Dean

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

Many routine daily activities—such as cooking and commuting—cause large recurring pollution spikes that may impact health without significantly affecting average exposure. We study pollution spikes by combining experimental variation in cooking tec...

Diffusion of Reproductive Health Behavior through International Migration: Effects on Origin-Country Fertility

By Susan Godlonton and Caroline Theoharides

American Economic Review, October 2025

International migrants may facilitate the transmission of ideas across countries. We examine the impact of migrant exposure to reproductive health policies on origin-country fertility in the Philippines. We exploit temporal variation in destination-countr...

Turbocharging Profits? Contract Gaming and Revenue Allocation in Healthcare

By Atul Gupta, Ambar La Forgia, and Adam Sacarny

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

Firms often exploit weaknesses in government contracts to boost revenues, yet little is known about how they allocate these funds. We study how hospitals allocated $3 billion obtained from gaming a Medicare loophole. The average gaming hospital increase...

Improving Women's Mental Health during a Pandemic

By Michael Vlassopoulos, Abu Siddique, Tabassum Rahman, Debayan Pakrashi, Asad Islam, and Firoz Ahmed

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2024

This paper evaluates a randomized, over-the-phone counseling intervention aimed at mitigating the mental health impact of COVID-19 on a sample of 2,402 women across 357 villages in Bangladesh. We find that the provision of two hours of mental support plus...

Gender and the macroeconomy

[Research Highlight]

October 17, 2025

How has women's labor force participation shaped America's business cycles?

Health Sector Structural Change

By Nick Pretnar and Maria Feldman

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics

The U.S. health-services sector has grown both in terms of its expenditure share and relative price. Using a two-sector general equilibrium model with monopolistic competition and endogenous population, we find that relative price growth is almost enti...

Place Effects and Geographic Inequality in Health at Birth

By Eric Chyn and Na'ama Shenhav

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, November 2025

This paper uses birth records and mothers who move to quantify the absolute and relative importance of birth location for early-life health. Using a model that includes mother and location fixed effects, we find that moving from a below- to an above-media...

Managers and Public Hospital Performance

By Pablo Muñoz and Cristóbal Otero

American Economic Review, November 2025

We study whether the quality of managers can affect public service provision in the context of public health. Using novel data from public hospitals in Chile, we show how the introduction of a competitive recruitment system and better pay for public hospi...

Survivors’ Mental Health and the Protective Role of Income Stability

By Itzik Fadlon, Astrid S. Fugleholm, and Torben H. Nielsen

American Economic Review: Insights

We use administrative records on the universe of Danish households to characterize survivors’ mental health following their spouse’s death. We provide visually clear evidence for the immediate, large, and lingering adverse impacts and focus on study...

Female Leaders and Intrahousehold Dynamics: Evidence from State Elections in India

By S Anukriti, Bilge Erten, and Priya Mukherjee

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy

We study the impact of women's political representation on the wellbeing of their female constituents, specifically in the domain of health. Increasing women's political representation leads to greater public provision of reproductive healthcare servic...

Dynamics of Consumer Responses to Medical Price Changes

By Norihiro Komura and Shun-Ichiro Bessho

American Economic Review: Insights, December 2025

How individuals respond to coinsurance rates is fundamental for insurance market design, but most existing estimates speak only to short-run responses. We exploit a unique policy experiment that increased the coinsurance rate some elderly individuals face...

Elliott, Robert. The Economics of the UK Health and Social Care Labour Market: How Labour Economics Can Inform Policy toward the Frontline Care Workforce

By Elaine Kelly

Journal of Economic Literature, December 2025

Targeted supply-side enforcement in the controlled substance market

[Research Highlight]

December 02, 2025

Adam Soliman discusses the effects of crackdowns on prescription opioids.