In this study we investigate if risk attitudes explain non-enrollment into Medicare Part D. We find that respondents who are risk-tolerant as measured by the willingness-to-pay for a hypothetical insurance were significantly less likely to enroll in Part D.

We investigate the common assumption in applied research that reporting errors are negligible in variables where there is no clear incentive for misreporting. Using major medical operations, we find high misreporting rates, but the coefficients of their predictors remain unbiased.

I document the dimorphic patterns for the association between DAT1 9R9R genotype and measures of risky behaviors including drinking, use of marijuana, cocaine, other drugs, and number of sexual partners. The associations between DAT1 9R9R genotype and risky behaviors are often in opposite signs...

When doctors are unconstrained in setting fees, they charge higher fees to high income patients. For a standard GP consultation, the average fee gap is 25% of a minimum price. Competition closes this gap, but not local area income.

In a market where insurers are not allowed to risk rate, we find evidence of advantageous selection using observed health expenditure risk. Selection is driven by income and optimism about the future. This may explain insurers’ profitability, despite community rating.

Iron deficiency anemia is the most prevalent nutritional deficiency in the world, affecting more than 2 billion people in developing countries. We show that a modest cash transfer substantially reduced anemia among women of reproductive age in rural Ecuador.

Smoking bans in public places are considered an important public health intervention. The impact of such bans on health, and especially self-reported health, has not been widely considered in the literature. This paper investigates the impact of a public smoking ban on self-reported health...

Inequality indices for self-assessed health and life satisfaction are typically constructed as functions of the cumulative distribution function. We present a unified methodology for the estimation of the resulting inequality indices. We also obtain explicit standard error formulas in the...

This paper analyses the relation between unemployment, marriage, divorce, widowhood and subjective well-being using Russian panel data. Contrary to Clark et al. (2008) and Clark and Georgellis (2013), we find little evidence of adaptation to these life events.