We examine whether loss of emergency department services is associated with county-level mortality rates in rural areas over the period 2005-2018. We use a propensity-weighted difference-in-difference approach, comparing counties that lost emergency department services to counties that retained...

This study examines "tunneling" practices through which health care providers covertly extract profit by making inflated payments for goods and services to commonly-owned related parties. While incentives to tunnel exist across sectors, health care providers may find it uniquely advantageous to...

This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic...

There is much debate about the effects of pharmaceutical direct to consumer advertising (DTCA) on health care use. In this paper, we inform this debate by examining the effects of DTCA on office visits, as well as treatment courses resulting from those visits, for five common chronic conditions...

This paper examines the tradeoffs of monitoring for wasteful public spending. By penalizing unnecessary spending, monitoring improves the quality of public expenditure and incentivizes firms to invest in compliance technology. I study a large Medicare program that monitored for unnecessary...

There is substantial evidence that cost-sharing in medical care constrains total health spending. However, there is relatively little (and unclear) evidence on its health effects, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This paper re-evaluates the link between outpatient cost-sharing...

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,...

We study the role of trade policy in one of the most pressing climate policy challenges that developing countries face: meeting voluntary emission restraints (VERs). To do so, we develop a general equilibrium trade model that extends Caliendo and Parro (2015) in three dimensions. First, we model...

Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT have the potential to revolutionize research in economics and other disciplines. I describe 25 use cases along six domains in which LLMs are starting to become useful as both research assistants and tutors: ideation, writing, background research, data...

When economists analyze a well-conducted RCT or natural experiment and find a statistically significant effect, they conclude the null of no effect is unlikely to be true. But how frequently is this conclusion warranted? The answer depends on the proportion of tested nulls that are true and the...