We examine cost-plus lagged-price reimbursement contracts, focusing on Medicare Part B's payment for physician-administered drugs. Our theoretical model shows that lagged-price reimbursement can raise launch prices but lower prices in later periods. While previous research showed Part B...

The U.S. opioid crisis is now driven by fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid that currently accounts for 90% of all opioid deaths. Fentanyl is smuggled from abroad, with little evidence on how this happens. We show that a substantial amount of fentanyl smuggling occurs via legal trade flows,...

Proposed "delinking" legislation would prohibit Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) from being remunerated based on the rebates and discounts they negotiate for drug insurance plans serving Medicare beneficiaries. This policy would significantly change drug pricing and utilization and shift...

We investigate whether increased racial diversity of clinical trial principal investigators could increase the enrollment of Black patients, which currently lags population and disease-burden shares. We conducted a survey experiment in which respondents were shown a photo of a current NIH...

Naloxone is a life-saving medication which helps reverse the effects of an opioid overdose. Improving naloxone access is a central pillar of the federal response to the worsening opioid crisis in the United States. Existing studies have evaluated the effects of state naloxone access laws,...

Drug patent litigation settlements containing brand-to-generic "reverse payments" are a decades old antitrust concern that has been estimated to cost drug purchasers billions of dollars per year. Most estimates of the harm rely on the Federal Trade Commission's calculation that such payments...

The CDC reports that 1.13 million Americans have died of COVID-19 through June of 2023. I use a model of the impact over the past three years of vaccines and private and public behavior to mitigate disease transmission during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States to address two questions....

We investigate women's fertility, labor and marriage market responses to a health innovation that led to reductions in mortality from treatable causes, and especially large declines in child mortality. We find delayed childbearing, with lower intensive and extensive margin fertility, a decline...

Regulatory review of new medicines is often viewed as a hindrance to innovation by increasing the hurdle to bring products to market. However, a more complete accounting of regulation must also account for its potential market expanding effects through quality certification. We combine data on...