We document the existence of a gubernatorial election cycle in state executions, suggesting that election year political considerations play a role in determining the timing of executions. Our analysis indicates that states are approximately 25 percent more likely to conduct executions in...

Most of my research at Yale University School of Medicine over the past several years has focused on identifying older adults at risk of functional decline and disability, identifying events that may precipitate the transition from functional independence to disability, and developing strategies...

In 1993 I wrote "Communication and information management consume as much as 40 percent of all inpatient costs, yet errors still occur at an unacceptable rate. The Institute of medicine has suggested that electronic medical records (EMRs) will help lower health care costs, maintain quality of...

December 2000 (Revised from September 2000). Background: The economic costs of depression are significant, both the direct medical costs of care and the indirect costs of lost productivity. Empirical studies of antidepressant cost-effectiveness suggest that the use of selective serotonin...

December 2002 (Revised from October 2002). Depression is a condition with various modes of treatment, including pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and some combination of each. The role of psychotherapy in the treatment of depression relative to the role of pharmacotherapy is not well understood,...

Palliative care is specialized healthcare for anyone who is diagnosed with a serious and life-threatening illness, starting when they get the diagnosis, regardless of the prognosis. Although hospice is a form of palliative care, most palliative care is not end-of-life care or hospice, a common...

One is always hesitant to speak about the future. A famous philosopher from New York, Yogi Berra, said "Making predictions is difficult, especially about the future," and I have some trepidation about doing so now. There is also the difficulty of understanding what really has happened in the...

This report describes preparation of data from the National Long-Term Care Survey (NLTCS) fur use in a dynamic multiple-indicator model of dependency in Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). The data set descrdibed makes use of all functional status information available across four NLTCS waves for...

We use exogenous variation in Social Security payments created by the Social Security benefits notch to estimate how retirees' use of prescription medications responds to changes in their incomes. In contrast to estimates obtained using ordinary least squares, instrumental variables estimates...

I examine whether individuals respond to monetary incentives to detect latent medical conditions. The effect is identified by an amendment to Title 38 that deemed diabetes associated with Agent Orange exposure a compensable disability under the VA's Disability Compensation program. Since a...