Alternative work arrangements, including temporary and contract work, have become more widespread. There is interest in understanding the effects of these types of arrangements on employment and earnings risk for workers and the potential for existing social insurance programs to address this...

Overdose deaths involving opioids have increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, leading to the worst drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history, but there is limited empirical evidence on the initial causes. In this paper, we examine the role of the 1996 introduction and marketing of OxyContin as...

This paper documents variation in working conditions among workers in the United States, presents new estimates of how workers value these conditions, and assesses the impact of working conditions on estimates of the wage structure and inequality. We use evidence from a series of...

There is considerable interest in understanding the broader effects of the opioid crisis on labor supply and social insurance programs in the United States. This paper examines how the recent transition of the opioid crisis from prescription opioids to more prevalent misuse of illicit opioids,...

Recent evidence suggests that the short-term transition of the opioid crisis from prescription opioids to heroin can be attributed to the reformulation of OxyContin, which substantially reduced access to abusable prescription opioids. In this paper, we find that over a longer time horizon,...

Over the last two decades, there has been a surge of opioid-related overdose deaths resulting in a myriad of state policy responses. Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of such policies using a wide-range of statistical models, each of which requires multiple design choices that can...

We study the effect of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on workers' compensation (WC) benefit receipt among adults 40-62 years. We find that WC receipt declines in response to RML adoption both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount. We estimate complementary...

Overdose deaths from prescription opioid pain relievers nearly quadrupled between 1999 and 2010, making this the worst drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history. In response, numerous supply-side interventions have aimed to limit access to opioids. However, these supply disruptions may have the...

Population aging is widely assumed to have detrimental effects on economic growth yet there is little empirical evidence about the magnitude of its effects. This paper starts from the observation that many U.S. states have already experienced substantial growth in the size of their older...

Moral hazard and adverse selection create inefficiencies in private health insurance markets and understanding the relative importance of each factor is critical for policy. We use claims data from a large firm to isolate moral hazard from plan selection. Previous studies have attempted to...