The growing application of cost-effectiveness (CE) analysis and controversies about its methods has led to a need to explore its welfare economic foundations. Examination of its welfare theoretic foundations can provide a rationale for selecting specific standards for the application of CE...

Long-term care is an important means of providing basic and humanitarian care for elderly Americans who are severely disabled. The demand for long-term care is likely to increase dramatically as baby-boomers begin to reach advanced ages. Long-term care has been a focus of health care reform...

Providing and financing long-term care of the elderly are among the most challenging policy issues facing the aging American population. This study examines characteristics and selected measures of utilization in the population most likely to use long-term care. It investigates characteristics...

Our empirical analysis shows that people who are interested in exercise commitment contracts choose longer contracts when nudged to do so, and are then more likely to meet their pre-stated exercise goals. People are also more likely to enroll in a subsequent commitment contract after the...

Sedentary lifestyles, obesity, and obesity-related chronic diseases have become increasingly common among U.S. adults, posing a major health policy challenge. While individuals may be interested in exercising more to reduce these health risks, they often have difficultly forming long-term...

It is well known that disability rates among the American elderly have declined over the past decades. The cause of this decline is less well established. In this paper, we test one important possible explanation--that the decline in disability occurred because of chronic disease prevention...

The U.S. health system has been described as the most competitive, heterogeneous, inefficient, fragmented, and advanced system of care in the world. In this paper, we consider two questions: First, is the U.S. health care system productively efficient relative to other wealthy countries, in the...