The top 5 percent of medical care consumers account for 50 percent of medical care expenditures, which is 9 percent of annual U.S. GDP. We offer new theoretical and empirical evidence that not just poor health, but the path to poor health, can better predict big spenders. Modeling the full...

We examine the effect of reference health on the demand for medical care. We propose and empirically implement a dynamic model of demand for medical care that includes reference health, an average of previous health states. We find that gain or loss from reference health significantly affects...

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK. There is only one other paper that has estimated these dual effects on a sample of immigrants to the US. We use the British Household Panel Survey, which contains information on height and weight for 2004...

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK using the British Household Panel Survey. We find support for the healthy immigrant hypothesis and evidence that immigrants' weights increase with time in the UK. While overweight and obese men enjoy a...

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK. There is only one other paper that has estimated these dual effects on a sample of immigrants to the US. We use the British Household Panel Survey, which contains information on height and weight for 2004...

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK. There is only one other paper that has estimated these dual effects on a sample of immigrants to the US. We use the British Household Panel Survey, which contains information on height and weight for 2004...

We estimate the dual effects of immigration and obesity on labor market outcomes in the UK. There is only one other paper that has estimated these dual effects on a sample of immigrants to the US. We use the British Household Panel Survey, which contains information on height and weight for 2004...

An extensive literature suggests that marriage confers health benefits to men and women; however the literature also suggests that the healthy are more likely to marry. Using a new econometric strategy we find strong evidence that unobservable factors are significantly correlated with both...

We generalize extant health capital models to provide an economic explanation for why individuals invest in health when survival and/or longevity prospects are poor. We allow relative health to impact utility and model depreciation as an amount rather than a rate. As a result, the decline in...