In response to the epidemic of prescription-drug abuse, now 49 US states have passed legislation to establish Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs). These programs track controlled-substance prescribing and usage behavior in an effort to improve patient outcomes and identify and preempt...

This study is an empirical assessment of the impact of the drug decriminalization policy followed by Portugal in July, 2001. We investigate especially the impact of the policy change on the price of illicit drugs. The analysis is performed using a difference-in-differences approach and a...

Governments worldwide are increasingly concerned about the booming CBD (cannabidiol) products. However, little is known about the impact of their liberalization. We study a unique case of unintended liberalization of a CBD-based product (light cannabis) that occurred in Italy in 2017. Using...

Influenza vaccination could be a cost-effective way to reduce costs in terms of human lives and productivity losses, but low take-up rates and vaccination unintentionally causing moral hazard may decrease its benefits. We ran a natural field experiment in cooperation with a bank in Ecuador,...

Reference prices constitute a main determinant of patient health care reimbursement in many countries. We study the effects of a change from an "external" (based on a basket of prices in other countries) to an "internal" (based on comparable domestic products) reference price system.We find that...

This paper analyzes whether part-time employment is beneficial for firm productivity in the service sector. Using a unique dataset on the Dutch pharmacy sector that includes the work hours of all employees and a hard physical measure of firm productivity, we estimate a production function...

This paper analyzes the changing characteristics of Chinese immigrants to Canada between 1980 and 2001. It reveals that recent Chinese immigrants to Canada constitute a substantially different group from those of former years. They are no longer a homogeneous group from the rural areas of...

An earlier study of wage agreements, reached in the Canadian unionized sector between 1976-99, found that wage adjustment is characterized by downward nominal rigidity and significant spikes at zero. We extend this earlier approach to encompass the possibility of real as well as nominal wage...

Using the Canadian General Social Survey we compute returns to post-secondary education relative to high-school. Unlike previous research using Canadian data, our dataset allows us to control for ability selection into higher education. We find strong evidence of positive ability selection into...

We conduct experiments in which participants made multiple intertemporal decisions throughout a seven week period. In addition to exploring dynamic consistency and the stability of single period discount rates, our experiments introduce a manipulation to identify the role of positive and...