What are the important tradeoffs in consulting a single expert for both diagnosis and treatment? On one hand, an integrated diagnostician may have the incentive to recommend treatments that are not in the buyer's best interests. On the other hand, joint production of diagnosis and treatment by...

Medicare currently allows beneficiaries to choose between a government-run health plan and a privately- administered program known as Medicare Advantage (MA). Because enrollment in MA is optional, conventional observational estimates of the program's impact are potentially subject to selection...

Evidence from behavioral economics reveals that decision-making in health care settings can be affected by circumstances and choice architecture. This paper conducts an analysis of choice of private Medicare plans (Medicare Advantage plans) in Miami-Dade County. We provide a detailed description...

Conventional outcomes report cards-- public disclosure of information about the patient-background-adjusted health outcomes of individual hospitals and physicians -- may help improve quality, but they may also encourage providers to "game" the system by avoiding sick and/or seeking healthy...

In theory, there are several reasons why physician organizational form might affect the price, quantity, and quality of physician services. In this paper, we examine the effect of three aspects of physician organizational form on opioid prescribing: the number of physicians in the physician's...

Because the optimal level of medical malpractice liability depends on the incentives provided by the health insurance system, the rise of managed care in the 1990s may affect the relationship between liability reform and defensive medicine. In this paper, we assess empirically the extent to...

Previous research suggests that "direct" reforms to the liability system -- reforms designed to reduce the level of compensation to potential claimants -- reduce medical expenditures without important consequences for patient health outcomes. We extend this research by identifying the mechanisms...

Prevailing wage laws, which require that construction workers employed by private contractors on public projects be paid at least the wages and benefits that are "prevailing" for similar work in or near the locality in which the project is located, have been the focus of an extensive policy...

We study the consequences of hospital competition for Medicare beneficiaries' heart attack care from 1985 to 1994. We examine how relatively exogenous determinants of hospital choice such as travel distances influence the competitiveness of hospital markets, and how hospital competition...

This paper presents a model of prosecutors' decision-making processes in which prosecutors (both federal and state) internalize some of the benefits of reducing crime, but also care about developing their own human capital. Since U.S. attorneys make their decision first, they have the...