This paper makes contributions to the estimation of health production functions and the economics of fertility control. We present the first infant health production functions that simultaneously control for self selection in the resolution of pregnancies as live births or induced abortions and...

This paper has two purposes. The first is to develop a methodological framework that can be used to introduce and discuss alternative explanations of the correlation between health and schooling. The second is to test these explanations empirically in order to select the most relevant ones and...

Based on an analysis of the second National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted between 1976 and 1980, we find that the frequency of the consumption of beer, the most popular alcoholic beverage among youths, is inversely related to the real price of beer and to the minimum legal...

We investigate two-way causality between health and the hourly wage by employing insights from the human capital and compensating wage differential models, a panel formed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and dynamic panel estimation methods in this investigation. We uncover a...

In recent years, the debate over the costs and benefits of legalizing the use of currently illicit drugs has been revived. This paper attempts to inform this debate by providing some evidence on the effects of illicit drug prices and legal sanctions for drug possession and sale on youth drug...

The paper examines price discounting by health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations in markets for hospital services. Our empirical analysis focuses on transaction prices for angioplasty, which is a relatively common procedure, with well defined 'product'...

The basic purpose of our research is to contribute to an understanding of the joint determination of children's cognitive development and their health. Although there is a large literature concerning the first of these issues, there has been little work on the latter. We also explore...

This paper concentrates on both the positive and normative effects of punishments that enforce laws to make production and consumption of particular goods illegal, with illegal drugs as the main example. Optimal public expenditures on apprehension and conviction of illegal suppliers obviously...

In this paper we summarize research that deals with the effects of alcoholic beverage prices and excise taxes on a variety of outcomes for youth. These include alcohol consumption, excessive consumption, motor vehicle accident mortality, and college completion rates. The research employs six...

This study focuses on the effects of variations in alcoholic beverage prices among states of the United States on violence on college campuses. The principal hypothesis tested is that the incidence of violence is negatively related to the price of alcohol. This hypothesis is derived from two...