With the mounting U.S. trade deficit, much attention has centered on the role of U.S. macroeconomic policy and economic structure as contributing factors. This paper contends that the economic structure and policies of Japan have also done much to contribute to the trade imbalance. Institutional...

Data on 2,355 married women from the 2006 China Health and Nutrition Survey are used to study how female employment affects fertility in China. China has deep concerns with both population size and female employment, so the relationship between the two should be better understood. Causality...

Consumerism arises when patients acquire and use medical information from sources apart from their physicians, such as the Internet and direct-to-patient advertising. Consumerism has been hailed as a means of improving quality. This need not be the result. Consumerist patients place additional...

Generic drug utilization has risen dramatically, from 19% of scrips in 1984 to 47% in 2001, thus bringing significant direct dollar savings. Generic drug use may also yield indirect savings if it lowers the average price of those brand-name drugs that are still purchased. Prior work indicates -...

In September 1997, the anti-obesity drugs Pondimin and Redux, ingredients in the popular drug combination fen-phen, were withdrawn from the market for causing potentially fatal side effects. That event provides an opportunity for studying how consumers respond to drug withdrawals. In theory,...

This paper models the physician services market which is regulated by two government agencies. The Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) sets Medicare physician fees through the newly implemented Resource Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS). The Agency for Health Care Policy and Research...

As China transforms from a socialist planned economy to a market-oriented economy, its returns to education are expected to rise to meet those found in middle-income established market economies. This study employs a plausible instrument for education: the China Compulsory Education Law of 1986....