In this paper, we test whether the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansions are associated with in-hospital maternal morbidity. The ACA expansions may have affected maternal morbidity by increasing pre-conception access to health care, and by improving the quality of delivery care through...

During the past fifteen years, more than 30% of US coal plants have had at least one coal-fired generator close. We utilize this natural experiment to estimate the effect of coal plant exposure on mortality and house values. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that, despite the...

The CDC reports that 1.13 million Americans have died of COVID-19 through June of 2023. I use a model of the impact over the past three years of vaccines and private and public behavior to mitigate disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to address two questions....

This paper examines the relationship between extreme socioeconomic disadvantage and poor health by providing the first detailed and accurate picture of mortality patterns among people experiencing homelessness in the U.S. Our analyses center on 140,000 people who were sheltered or unsheltered...

Many environmental hazards produce health effects that take years to arise, but quasi-experimental studies typically measure outcomes and treatment over short time periods. We develop a new approach to overcome this challenge and use it to gauge the effect of exposure to air pollution on US life...

We examine whether loss of emergency department services is associated with county-level mortality rates in rural areas over the period 2005-2018. We use a propensity-weighted difference-in-difference approach, comparing counties that lost emergency department services to counties that retained...

We study the impact of the 1918 Spanish Flu on U.S. stock prices. We use the death rate to control for the impact of the global pandemic and war news reported in the New York Times to capture the positive effects of the end of World War I on stock prices. Using a new weekly hand collected NYSE...

This essay reviews <i>Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism</i> (DEATHS), by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a fascinating account of life and death in the United States during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While primarily targeted towards a popular audience, the volume will be of...

We experimentally study individuals' perceptions about and advice to others regarding retirement savings and annuitization during the pandemic. Many people recommend that others save more for retirement, but those most affected by the pandemic tell others to save and annuitize less. We...

We explore the role of founding teams in accounting for the post-entry dynamics of startups. While the entrepreneurship literature has largely focused on business founders, we broaden this view by considering founding teams as both the founders and early joiners. We investigate the idea that the...