Taxation of cigarettes and alcohol can raise revenue and reduce consumption of goods with negative external effects. Despite medical and psychological evidence linking their consumption, little previous work has investigated the significance of cross-price effects in cigarette and alcohol...

We test the effect of the introduction of Medicare Part D on physician prescribing behavior by using data on physician visits from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS) 2002-2004 and 2006-2009 for patients aged 60-69. We use a combined DD-RD specification that is an improvement...

A substantial body of research has found that expansions in Medicaid eligibility increased enrollment in Medicaid, reduced the rate of uninsured, and reduced the rate of private health insurance coverage (i.e., crowd out). Notably, there has been little research that has examined the mechanism...

A strong association between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and worse health-- the SES-health gradient-- has been documented in many countries, but little work has compared the size of the gradient across countries. We compare the size of the income gradient in self-reported health in the US...

A strong association between lower socioeconomic status and worse health has been documented within many countries, but little work has been done to compare the strength of this relationship across countries. We compare the strength of the relationship between income and self-reported health in...

This paper investigates the effect of health insurance on health and the use of health services by exploiting a change in insurance status that occurs for most Americans at age 65; that is, eligibility for the U.S. Medicare program. A regression discontinuity design is employed to identify...