In 1978 North Carolina created a special fund to pay for abortions for indigent women. The appropriations for that fund have proven inadequate during five of the years in which it has been in operation, with the result in each case that no state funding was available for several months. This...

Excess drinking is associated with lost productivity, accidents, disability, early death, crime, neglect of family responsibilities, and personality deterioration. These and related concerns have justified special restrictions on alcoholic-beverage commerce and consumption. The nature and extent...

We develop a life-cycle model of optimal retirement and savings behavior under complete markets where retirement is caused by worsening health in old age. Our model explains the long-run decline in the age of retirement as an income level effect. We show that improvements in health and longevity...

The literature on the health economics of smoking presents two principal facts: that smoking increases health care costs, and that restrictions on smoking lead to reductions in smoking prevalence and intensity. Some researchers have hypothesized that these two facts, in combination, allow the...

We study the effects of bicycle safety regulations in both the United States and the United Kingdom on bicycle accident rates for various population age groups. We find small, statistically significant decreases in the accident rates as the stock of bicycles increases its compliance with the...

This study analyzes the effects of tobacco excise tax changes on mortality due to heart disease, cancer, and asthma. Reduced form regressions of mortality rates on tax data for the years 1954-1988, with controls for state, year, income, and unobserved persistence, indicate that tax increases...

Observed patterns of youthful drinking indicate substantial persistence. This paper analyzes how much of that persistence reflects the actual development of a habit, and how much is due to unobserved aspects of the individual and the environment. The role of restrictions on alcohol availability,...

We analyze the effects on consumers of an extreme policy experiment -- Napsterizing' pharmaceuticals -- whereby all patent rights on branded prescription drugs are eliminated for both existing and future prescription drugs without compensation to the patent holders. The question of whether this...

We explore the proposition that expected longevity affects retirement decisions and accumulated wealth using micro data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study for the United States. We use data on a person's subjective probability of survival to age 75 as a proxy for their prospective...

We present a simple framework in which both the exchange rates disconnect and forward bias puzzles are simultaneously resolved. The flexible-price two-country monetary model is extended to include a consumption externality with habit persistence. Habit persistence is modeled using Campbell...