The conventional model for the use of cost effectiveness analysis for health programs involves determining whether the cost per unit of effectiveness of the program is better than some socially determined maximum acceptable cost per unit of effectiveness. If a program is better, the policy...

This paper examines performance in a tournament setting with different levels of inequality in rewards and different provision of information about individual's skill at the task prior to the tournament. We find that that total tournament output depends on inequality according to an inverse U...

Both private and public organizations constantly grapple with incentive schemes to induce maximum effort from agents. We begin with a theoretical exploration of optimal contest design, focusing on the number of competitors. Our theory reveals a critical link between the distribution of luck and...

In this study we examine the effects of transferring physicians from a compensation system based on salary to a profit-sharing system. Consistent with theory, we find that the change has a large and significant effect on the quantity of services provided. In addition, we find a selection effect,...

Tournaments, reward structures based on rank order, are compared with individual contracts in a model with one risk-neutral principal and many risk-averse agents. Each agents' output is a stochastic function of his effort level plus an additive shock term that is common to all the agents. The...

Hospitals and physicians independently negotiate contracts with insurers. As a result, a privately insured individual can attend an in-network hospital emergency department, but receive care and potentially a large, unexpected bill from an out-of-network emergency physician working at that...

Research has shown that higher cost-sharing lowers health care spending levels but less is known about whether cost-sharing also affects spending growth. From 2002 to 2016, private insurance deductibles more than tripled in magnitude. We use data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid...

Objective: The ratio of controller to reliever medication use has been proposed as a measure of treatment quality for asthma patients. In this study we examine the effects of plan level mean out-of-pocket asthma medication patient copayments and other features of benefit plan design on the use...