The standard Medicare Part D drug insurance contract is nonlinear--with reduced subsidies in a coverage gap--resulting in a dynamic purchase problem. We consider enrollees who arrived near the gap early in the year and show that they should expect to enter the gap with high probability, implying...

Most new consumer durable goods experience rapid prices declines and quality improvements, suggesting the importance of modeling dynamics. This paper specifies a dynamic model of consumer preferences for new durable goods with persistently heterogeneous consumer tastes, rational expectations,...

In this paper we estimate the returns associated with the provision of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, by payer type (Medicare, HMO, etc.). Because reliable measures of prices and treatment costs are often unobserved, we seek to infer returns from hospital entry behavior. We...

We estimate a Bayesian learning model in order to assess the value of health plan performance information and the extent to which the explicit provision of information about product quality alters consumer behavior. We take advantage of a natural experiment in which health plan performance...

Using a novel dataset from a large supermarket retailer in a European country that never engages in temporary sales, we establish that prices are actually as sticky as regular prices. Circumventing the debate on whether sales have to be included or excluded from price adjustments, we find...

This paper specifies and estimates a dynamic model of consumer preferences for new durable goods with persistent heterogeneous consumer tastes, rational expectations about future products and repeat purchases over time. Most new consumer durable goods, particularly consumer electronics, are...

In this paper we estimate the returns associated with the provision of coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, by payer type (Medicare, HMO, etc.). Because reliable measures of prices and treatment costs are often unobserved, we seek to infer returns from hospital entry behavior. We...