Moral hazard and provider-induced demand may contribute to overutilization of scarce health care resources. The U.S. health care system includes several compensatory cost-containment mechanisms, but their effects depend on how patients and providers respond. We investigate hospice programs'...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming production across all sectors of the economy, with the potential to both complement and substitute for traditional labor inputs. Healthcare is no exception. Dozens of recent academic studies demonstrate that AI can contribute to the healthcare value...

This paper examines whether loss of locally available hospital-based obstetric services affects racial/ethnic disparities in intrapartum care access and birth outcomes in rural areas of the US. To conduct causal inference, we combine difference-in-difference and propensity score matching methods...

We study the role of physicians in driving geographic variation of US healthcare utilization. We estimate a model that separates variation in average utilization of Medicare beneficiaries due to physicians, non-physician supply side factors, and patient demand. The model is identified by...

We explore the role that physicians play in moderating compliance with recommended vaccinations. Using administrative data on the universe of Danish children and their healthcare providers, we first construct and validate a measure of providers' propensities to comply with recommended...

Privatization has been shown to increase growth and profitability of public firms. However, effects on consumers are understudied. We study potential trade-offs in the US hospital sector where public control declined by 42% over 1983-2019. Private operators may improve hospitals' financial...

We present results from a nationally representative survey of American adults, guided by a simple theoretical model expressing health care-seeking behavior as a function of economic and behavioral fundamentals and highlighting the role of trust. We report several findings. First, we document a...

We report results from the first randomization of a regulatory reform in the health sector. The reform established minimum quality standards for patient safety, an issue that has become increasingly salient following the Ebola and COVID-19 epidemics. In our experiment, all 1348 health facilities...

We study the impact of losing health insurance on criminal activity by leveraging one of the most substantial Medicaid disenrollments in U.S. history, which occurred in Tennessee in 2005 and lead to 190,000 non-elderly and non-disabled adults without dependents unexpectedly losing coverage....

We hypothesize that the impact of antibiotics is moderated by a population's inherent (genetic) resistance to infectious disease. Using the introduction of sulfa drugs in 1937, we show that US states that are more genetically susceptible to infectious disease saw larger declines in their...