A mainstream motivation for decentralized government is to enable public service investments to better align with political preferences that may differ by geographical region. This paper examines how political preferences determine local government provision of hospital services. We find that...

A large literature examines the effect of health insurance on mortality. We contribute by emphasizing two challenges in using the Affordable Care Act (ACA)'s quasi-experimental variation to study mortality. The first is non-parallel pretreatment trends. Rising mortality in Medicaid non-expansion...

We use panel U.S. tax data spanning 2008-2013 to study the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) young adult provision on two important demographic outcomes--childbearing and marriage. The impact on childbearing is theoretically ambiguous, as gaining insurance may increase access to...

In the early phases of the COVID-19 epidemic labor markets exhibited considerable churn, which we relate to three primary findings. First, reopening policies generated asymmetrically large increases in reemployment of those out of work, compared to modest decreases in job loss among those...

The relationship between population health and measures of economic well-being and economic activity is a long standing topic in health economics (Preston, 1975; Cutler, Deaton, and Lleras-Muney, 2006; Ruhm, 2000). The conceptual issues in analyzing the complicated link between health and economic...

We study the effects of the temporary federal paid sick leave mandate that became effective April 1st, 2020 on 'social distancing,' as proxied by individuals' physical mobility behavior gleaned from cellular devices. The national paid leave policy was implemented in response to the COVID-19...

This paper examines the determinants of social distancing during the COVID-19 epidemic. We classify state and local government actions, and we study multiple proxies for social distancing based on data from smart devices. Mobility fell substantially in all states, even ones that have not adopted...

Vaccines influence the course of pandemics both directly, by protecting the vaccinated, and indirectly, by reducing transmission to the unvaccinated, a key externality. Estimating direct effects is challenging because of selective vaccine take-up; estimating indirect effects also poses...

We evaluate progress in President's Johnson's War on Poverty. We do so relative to the scientifically arbitrary but policy relevant 20 percent baseline poverty rate he established for 1963. No existing poverty measure fully captures poverty reductions based on the standard that President Johnson...

Advocates of minimum wage increases have long touted their potential to reduce poverty. This study assesses this claim. Using data spanning nearly four decades from the March Current Population Survey, and a dynamic difference-in-differences approach, we find that a 10 percent increase in the...