We study disparities in liver transplant allocation when innovation alleviates the scarcity of organs. When direct-acting antivirals for Hepatitis C (HCV) reduced HCV+ liver demand, we show a disproportionate increase in White HCV- liver transplants (56.6%) relative to Black HCV- transplants...

Healthcare fraud imposes a sizable cost on U.S. public healthcare budgets and distorts health care provision. We examine the economics of health care fraud and enforcement using theory and data and connect to a growing literature on the topic. We first offer a new economic definition of health...

I discuss the health transition in the United States, bringing new data to bear on health indicators, and investigating the changing relationship between health, income, and the environment. I argue that scientific advances played an outsize role and that health improvements were largest among...

We evaluate the introduction of direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy for Hepatitis C (HCV) on liver transplant allocation in the United States. We develop a model of listing and organ acceptance behavior for patients with both HCV-positive and HCV-negative end-stage liver disease. In the model,...

There are many economic environments in which an object is offered sequentially to prospective buyers. It is often observed that once the object for sale is turned down by one or more agents, those that follow do the same. One explanation that has been proposed for this phenomenon is that agents...

Many patients in need of a kidney transplant have a willing but incompatible (or poorly matched) living donor. Kidney exchange programs arrange exchanges among such patient-donor pairs, in cycles and chains of exchange, so each patient receives a compatible kidney. Kidney exchange has become a...

Kidney exchange emerges as a pioneering application in the early stages of market design. In contrast to most other successful applications in the field, where design economists primarily serve as consultants to decision-makers, in the context of kidney exchange, they assumed the role of...

Because no marketplace operates in isolation from the larger world, marketplace designs may need to adapt to changes in the larger environments. I discuss such changes in connection with the labor markets for new doctors, new Ph.D. economists, and for kidney exchange transplants. But while...

Between 1960 and 1997, life expectancy at birth of Americans increased approximately 10% - from 69.7 to 76.5 years - and it has been estimated that the value of life extension during this period nearly equaled the gains in tangible consumption. We investigate whether an aggregate health...

Even though data on hospital admissions are widely used in health research, hospitalization-related quantities measured using these data are not always clearly conceptualized. Consequently, estimators of these quantities can have unclear rationales and undesirable properties. We evaluate three...