We examine whether medical innovation can reinforce existing health disparities by disproportionately benefiting socioeconomically advantaged patients. The reason is that less advantaged patients often do not use new medications. This may be due to high costs of new drugs, but could also reflect...

Health-maximizing and welfare-maximizing behaviors can be at odds, especially among disadvantaged groups, generating health disparities. We estimate a lifecycle model of medication and labor supply decisions using data on HIV-positive men. We evaluate an effective HIV treatment innovation that...

There have been more than 500,000 opioid overdose deaths since 2000. To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov...

The role of friends in the US opioid epidemic is examined. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health), adults aged 25-34 and their high school best friends are focused on. An instrumental variable technique is employed to estimate peer effects in opioid...