Technology change is modeled as the result of decisions of individuals and groups of individuals to adopt more advanced technologies. The structure is calibrated to the U.S. and postwar Japan growth experiences. Using this calibrated structure we explore how large the disparity in the effective...

The US health care sector is, by most accounts, extraordinarily inefficient. Health information technology (IT) has been championed as a tool that can transform health care delivery. Recently, the federal government has taken an active role in promoting health IT diffusion. There is little...

We seek to investigate whether managed health care can affect mortality, and if so, through which mechanisms. We estimate the impact of Medicare+Choice (M+C), Medicare's managed care program, on elderly mortality, using a county-level panel from 1993 to 2000. We control for endogenous M+C...

This paper develops new econometric methods to infer hospital quality in a model with discrete dependent variables and non-random selection. Mortality rates in patient discharge records are widely used to infer hospital quality. However, hospital admission is not random and some hospitals may...

This paper studies the effects of nursing home unionization on numerous labor, establishment, and consumer outcomes using a regression discontinuity design. We find negative effects of unionization on staffing levels and no decline in care quality, suggesting positive labor productivity effects....

This paper reviews the literature devoted to studying markets for health care services and health insurance. There has been tremendous growth and progress in this field. A tremendous amount of new research has been done in this area over the last 10 years. In addition, there has been increasing...

Standard Medicare Part D drug insurance provides limited coverage in a ``donut hole'' region, making the purchase problem dynamic. We develop a discontinuity-based test for myopia using enrollees who arrived near the coverage gap early in the year. We find that there are fewer and cheaper...

This paper examines optimal regulatory testing requirements when new product quality is uncertain but market participants may learn over time. We develop a model capturing the regulator's tradeoff between consumer risk exposure and access to innovation. Using new data and exogenous variation...

Health information technology (IT) adoption, it is argued, will dramatically improve patient care. We study the impact of hospital IT adoption on patient outcomes focusing on the roles of technological and organizational complements in affecting IT's value and explore underlying mechanisms...

We estimate a bargaining model of competition between hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs) and use the estimates to evaluate the effects of hospital mergers. We find that MCO bargaining restrains hospital prices significantly. The model demonstrates the potential impact of coinsurance...