We study the role of physicians in driving geographic variation of US healthcare utilization. We estimate a model that separates variation in average utilization of Medicare beneficiaries due to physicians, non-physician supply side factors, and patient demand. The model is identified by...

A ubiquitous form of government intervention in insurance markets is to provide compulsory, but partial, public insurance coverage and to allow voluntary purchases of supplementary insurance on the private market. Yet we know little about the effects of such programs on total insurance coverage...

The conventional wisdom in health economics is that idiosyncratic features of the healthcare sector leave little scope for market forces to allocate consumers to higher performance producers. However, we find robust evidence across a variety of conditions and performance measures that higher...

The conventional wisdom in health economics is that large differences in average productivity across hospitals are the result of idiosyncratic, institutional features of the healthcare sector which dull the role of market forces. Strikingly, however, we find that productivity dispersion in heart...

Health insurance is increasingly provided through managed competition, in which subsidies for consumers and risk adjustment for insurers are key market design instruments. We illustrate that subsidies offer two advantages over risk adjustment in markets with adverse selection. They provide...

Long-term care expenditures constitute one of the largest uninsured financial risks facing the elderly in the United States. This paper provides an overview of the economic and policy issues surrounding insuring long-term care expenditure risk. Through this lens we also discuss the likely impact...

Over half of the U.S. population receives health insurance through an employer, with employer premium contributions creating a flat "head tax" per worker, independent of their earnings. This paper develops and calibrates a stylized model of the labor market to explore how this uniquely American...