Public financing of private health insurance may generate external effects beyond the subsidized population, by influencing the size and bargaining power of health insurers. We test for this external effect in the context of Medicare Part D. We analyze how Part D-related insurer size increases...

A controversial feature of Medicare Part D is its reliance on private insurers to negotiate drug prices and rebates with retail pharmacies and drug manufacturers. Central to this controversy is whether increases in market power--an undesirable feature in most settings--confer benefits in health...

In a complex economy, production is vertical and crosses jurisdictional lines. Goods are often produced by a global or national firm upstream and improved or distributed by local firms downstream. In this context, heightened products liability may have unintended consequences for consumer...

This study examines the effect of chain store entry on drug quality and prices in the retail pharmacy market in Hyderabad, India. In contrast to prevailing mom-and-pop pharmacies, chains exploit scale economies to offer high-quality drugs at lower cost. With a unique data set and a natural...

Most hospitals and managed care organizations have financial assistance programs that aim to reduce financial burdens and improve health care access for low-income patients. We use administrative data from Kaiser Permanente to study the effects of financial assistance on health care utilization....

We experimentally varied information mailed to 87,000 households in California's health insurance marketplace to study the role of frictions in insurance take-up. Reminders about the enrollment deadline raised enrollment by 1.3 pp (16 percent), in this typically low take-up population....

Features of Part D gave rise to broad concern that the drug benefit would negatively impact prescription utilization among the six million dual eligible beneficiaries, either during the transition from state Medicaid to Part D coverage, or in the long-run. At the same time, Part D contained...

We develop a new framework for valuing health and longevity improvements that departs from conventional but unrealistic assumptions of full annuitization and deterministic health. Our framework can value the prevention of mortality and of illness, and it can quantify the effects of retirement...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the long-run growth in weight over time. We argue that technological change has induced weight growth by making home- and market-production more sedentary and by lowering food prices through agricultural innovation. We analyze how...

Industries in which private nonprofit production is present and significant, such as health care and education, account for more than one-fifth of US economic activity. This paper argues that previous analysis of nonprofits has not separated profit-deviating preferences from the state-defined...