We estimate an insurer-specific preference function which rationalizes hospital referrals for privately-insured births in California. The function is additively separable in: a hospital price paid by the insurer, the distance traveled, and plan and severity-specific hospital fixed effects...

The theory of cost-shifting posits that nonprofit hospitals respond to negative financial shocks by raising prices for privately insured patients. We examine how hospitals responded to the sharp reductions in their endowments caused by the 2008 stock market collapse. We find that the average...

What is the impact and value of hurricane forecasts? We study this question using newly-collected forecast data for major US hurricanes since 2005. We find higher wind speed forecasts increase pre-landfall protective spending, but erroneous under-forecasts increase post-landfall damage and...

We use data from a sample of day care centers to estimate the relationships between cost and the quality of the child care service provided, and between revenue and quality. We use a measure of child care quality derived from an instrument designed by developmental psychologists. This measure of...

We survey 861 finance academics, professionals, and public sector regulators and policy economists about climate finance topics. They identify regulatory risk as the top climate risk to businesses and investors over the next five years, but they view physical risks as the top risk over the next...

How do communication costs affect the production of new ideas and inventions? To answer this question, we study the introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in Great Britain in 1840. This reform replaced the previous system of expensive distance-based postage fees with a uniform low rate of one...

This paper derives the dependency of optimal tariff and inflation tax on tax collection and enforcement costs. The analysis is done for a small, open economy. The existence of such costs can justify tariff and inflation tax policies as optimal revenue-raising devices. This paper suggests that...

There is an inherent tension between the idea that individuals have certain inalienable (natural) rights and the economist's postulate that the rate if utilization of anything whose production requires scarce resources must be limited by considerations of opportunity cost. Remarks about rights...

We examine the effect of the introduction of ridehailing in U.S. cities on fatal traffic accidents. The arrival of ridehailing is associated with an increase of approximately 3% in the number of fatalities and fatal accidents, for both vehicle occupants and pedestrians. The effects persist when...

We propose a model to identify the causes of rising profits and concentration, and declining entry and investment in the US economy. Our approach combines a rich structural DSGE model with cross-sectional identification from firm and industry data. Using asset prices, our model estimates the...