Previous research has found that Medicare benefits flow primarily to the most economically advantaged groups and that the financial returns to Medicare are consequently higher for the rich than for the poor. Taking a different approach, we find very different results. According to the Medicare...

Self-control devices, such as rehabilitation programs, group commitment, and informal fines, can make time-inconsistent smokers better off. Health economists have used this result to argue in favor of cigarette taxes that restrain smoking. However, taxes alone are not Pareto-improving overall,...

A fair amount of research suggests that health has been improving among the elderly over the past 10 to 15 years. Comparatively little research effort, however, has been focused on analyzing disability among the young. In this paper, we argue that health among the young has been deteriorating,...

Policymakers and the public are concerned about the role of medical malpractice liability in the rising cost of medical care. We use variation in the generosity of local juries to identify the causal impact of malpractice liability on medical costs, mortality, and social welfare. The effect of...

This paper analyzes the normative role for civil liability in aligning terrorism precaution incentives, when the perpetrators of terrorism are unreachable by courts or regulators. We consider the strategic interaction among targets, subsidiary victims, and terrorists within a sequential,...

Better-educated people are healthier, but the magnitude of the relationship between health and education varies substantially across groups and over time. We undertake a theoretical and empirical study of how health disparities by education vary over time and across the population, according to...

This paper investigates the rationale for government intervention in the market for terrorism insurance, focusing on the externalities associated with self-protection. Self-protection by one target encourages terrorists to substitute towards less fortified targets. Investments in self-...

Catastrophe bonds feature full collateralization of the underlying risk transfer, and thus abandon the insurance principle of economizing on collateral through diversification. We examine the theoretical foundations beneath this paradox, finding that fully collateralized instruments have...

This paper provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the long-run growth in weight over time. We argue that technological change has induced weight growth by making home- and market-production more sedentary and by lowering food prices through agricultural innovation. We analyze how...

Monopolies appear throughout health care markets, as a result of patents, limits to the extent of the market, or the presence of unique inputs and skills. In the health care industry, however, the deadweight costs of monopoly may be small or even absent. Health insurance, frequently implemented...