This note considers a relatively new form of financing for social services, the "Social Impact Bond." Proponents of Social Impact Bonds argue that they present a solution to several problems in funding social services, including performance measurement and the distribution of risk. Using a...

Thousands of gun shows take place in the U.S. each year. Gun control advocates argue that because sales at gun shows are much less regulated than other sales, such shows make it easier for potential criminals to obtain a gun. Similarly, one might be concerned that gun shows would exacerbate...

Estimates of the costs and consequences of many types of public policy proposals play an important role in the development and adoption of particular policy programs. Estimates of the same, or similar, policies that employ different modeling approaches can yield widely divergent results. Such...

Airports are some of the largest sources of air pollution in the United States. We demonstrate that daily airport runway congestion contributes significantly to local pollution levels and contemporaneous health of residents living nearby and downwind from airports. Our research design exploits...

In this paper, we estimate the impact of receiving an NIH grant on subsequent publications and citations. Our sample consists of all applications (unsuccessful as well as successful) to the NIH from 1980 to 2000 for postdoctoral training grants (F32s) and standard research grants (R01s). Both...

We estimate consumers%u2019 valuation of disability insurance using a stochastic lifecycle framework in which disability is modeled as permanent, involuntary retirement. We base our probabilities of worklimiting disability on 25 years of data from the Current Population Survey and examine the...

The US Food and drug Administration (FDA) is estimated to regulate markets accounting for about 20% of consumer spending in the US. This paper proposes a general methodology to evaluate FDA policies, in general, and the central speed-safety tradeoff it faces, in particular. We apply this...

Prior research has shown that exogenous shocks to the demand for medical products spur additional product development. These studies do not distinguish between breakthrough products and those that largely duplicate the performance of existing products. In this paper, we use a novel data set to...

In the United States, public health insurance programs cover over 90 million individuals. Changes in the scope of these programs, such as the Medicaid expansions under the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, may have large effects on physician behavior. This study finds...

Econometric estimates of the responsiveness of health-related consumer demand to higher prices are often key ingredients for policy analysis. Drawing on several examples, especially that of cigarette demand, we review the potential advantages and challenges of synthesizing econometric evidence...