Does using prescription drugs off-label increase disability and medical expenditure? This paper uses a unique dataset to evaluate off-label vs. on-label drug use in the US non-institutionalized population. Patients using drugs off-label have on average $515 higher medical expenditure and...

The purpose of this research is to explain the variation in the utilization of drug therapy for the medical conditions of depression, high cholesterol, and hypertension between Hispanics, non-Hispanic blacks, and non-Hispanics whites using Oaxaca-type decomposition analysis based on logit...

This paper estimates the health returns to education, using data on identical twins. I adopt a twin-differences strategy in order to obtain estimates that are not biased by unobserved family background and genetic traits that may affect both education and health. I further investigate to what...

The growth of health care costs and expenditures recently led to suggestions for innovations that would affect demand for health care. However, supply side issues were largely ignored in the debate despite the fact that the American Medical Association has controlled entry since it was granted...

Diabetes is the fifth leading cause of death by disease in the U.S. Diabetes also contributes to higher rates of morbidity-people with diabetes are at higher risk for heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, extremity amputations, and other chronic conditions. This study estimates the direct...

We investigate the effect of opium price shocks on the per capita dispensation of prescription opioids in the US. Using quarterly county-level data for 2003-2016, three main results emerge. First, reductions in opium prices significantly increase the quantity of opioids prescribed, and the more...

This paper estimates how changes in family structure and women’s labor market attachment during the last fifty years have affected the incidence of cesarean delivery in the United States. Both sets of factors are strongly related to cesarean utilization, and have generally changed so as to...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

This paper examines the effect of a decline in health on the savings and portfolio choice of young, working individuals and the differences between insured and uninsured cohorts using the 2001 Survey of Income and Program Participation. We find that insured individuals are significantly likely...

Since 2000 several papers have examined the efficiency of healthcare delivery systems worldwide. These papers have extended the literature using drastically different input and output combinations from one another, with little theoretical or empirical support backing these specifications. Issues...