Financing retirement -- Were they prepared for retirement? : financial status at advanced ages in the HRS and AHEAD cohorts / James M. Poterba, Steven F. Venti, and David A. Wise ; comment, David Laibson -- Economic preparation for retirement / Michael D. Hurd and Susann Rohwedder ; comment,...

There are widespread differences in total factor productivity across producers in the U.S. and around the world. To help explain these variations, we devise a general test for misallocation in input choices - the underuse of effective inputs and overuse of ineffective ones. Misallocation implies...

Between 2000 and 2020, the share of US hospital bed capacity under multi-unit firms (systems) increased from 58% to 81% - a rapid corporatization of a sector with $1.3 trillion in annual spend. However, little is known about how system ownership affects hospital profitability and quality. We...

Hospitals play a key role in patient outcomes and spending, but efforts to improve their quality are hindered because we do not know whether hospital quality indicators are causal or biased. We evaluate the validity of commonly used quality indicators, such as mortality, readmissions, inpatient...

The paper examines whether, among inpatient psychiatric admissions in California, for-profit (FP) hospitals engage in cream skimming, i.e., choosing patients for some characteristic(s) other than their need for care, which enhances the profitability of the provider. We propose a novel approach...

We examine whether loss of emergency department services is associated with county-level mortality rates in rural areas over the period 2005-2018. We use a propensity-weighted difference-in-difference approach, comparing counties that lost emergency department services to counties that retained...