California health and welfare officials asked the authors to identify ways that their programs could encourage service use among low-income women. The project posed a challenge: The clients wanted to identify supply-side barriers amenable to intervention, but prior research suggested other...

This review essay offers a critical assessment of the world economic and social situation through an examination of two recent books by the United Nations. It outlines the contours of the world economic crisis and makes some suggestions about its probable causes. Next, the policy responses to...

This paper offers a theoretical framework for understanding the crisis of the U.S. health care system and the mainstream debate to restructure health care financing and delivery system. It argues that the crisis of the health care system is a cause and a consequence of the long-cycle of...

Health insurance affects the rate at which individuals visit hospitals and emergency departments (EDs). We identify the causal effect of losing health insurance using a regression discontinuity design. We compare individuals just before and after their twenty third birthday, which insurers have...

Health insurance characteristics shift at age 65 as most people become eligible for Medicare. We measure the impacts of these changes on patients who are admitted to hospitals through emergency departments for conditions with similar admission rates on weekdays and weekends. The age profiles of...

The Amethyst Initiative, signed by more than 100 college presidents and other higher education officials calls for a reexamination of the minimum legal drinking age in the United States. A central argument of the initiative is that the U.S. minimum legal drinking age policy results in more...