Previous studies of Medicare’s prospective payment system for hospitals (PPS), introduced in 1983, evaluated only its first few years, using data collected during the hospital stay to control for patients’ health. We examine transitions among health care settings over a full decade following...

We study the interplay between monetary policy and financial conditions shocks. Such shocks have a significant and similar impact on the real economy, though with different degrees of persistence. The systematic fed funds rate response to a financial shock contributes to bringing the economy...

This paper discusses alternative incentive mechanisms for encouraging pharmaceutical innovations that support global health policy priorities. Patent buyouts, in which a public fund pays a mark-up on private valuations from sealed-bid second-price auctions, would boost the efficiency of research...

We study the incidence and extent of bribes paid to the doctors in the public health facilities which are cleverly identified using a nationally representative survey. The survey asks households about the fees paid to public doctors, not about the bribe, which makes it less prone to reporting...

Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures...

Today, the global pharmaceutical product value chain is becoming increasingly complex and this has led to the emergence of 'multiple quality standards' for medicines. But this non-uniformity in the quality of medicine is also contingent upon both the regulatory milieu in the country of...

Drug Regulation has been the focus of several recent policy reform efforts in India, starting with the Mashelkar Committee Report in 2003 to the most recent report of the Ranjit Roy Chaudhary Committee in 2013. Nevertheless, the regulatory structure continues to be plagued with several...

The context of community-based interventions presents formidable problems for any evaluation analysis. Group-randomized studies do possess ideal properties in theory, but in practice, grouprandomization might not be a feasible alternative at all or group-randomized studies might be contaminated....

We examine the impact of progressive and regressive abortion legislation on women's health and survival in Mexico. Following a 2007 reform in the Federal District of Mexico which decriminalised and subsidised early-term elective abortion, multiple other Mexican states increased sanctions on...

We evaluate one of the most prevalent prohibitory policies: banning the sales of tobacco to teens. We exploit the staggered introduction of sales bans across Switzerland and the European Union from 1990 to 2016. The estimates indicate a less than 1 percentage point reduction in teen smoking...