This paper provides an empirical test of the rational addiction model, used in economics to model individuals' consumption of addictive substances, versus the utility misprediction model, used in psychology to explain the discrepancy between people's decision and their subsequent experiences. By...

The median United States voter supports the legalization of marijuana, at least in part due to a desire to increase state tax revenues. However, states with legal markets have implemented wildly different regulatory schemes with tax rates ranging from 3.75 to 37 percent, indicating that policy...

Over the past two decades deaths from opioids and other drugs have grown to be a major U.S. population health problem, but the magnitude of the crisis varies across the U.S., and explanations for widespread geographic variation in the severity of the drug crisis are limited. An emerging debate...

Today's generation of young people (age group 10-24), the largest cohort in history at present, holds great potential for economic and social progress. Unfortunately, misuse of alcohol and illicit drugs is contributing to large numbers of deaths and disabilities for young people in developed...

Utilizing the Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey from 2005 to 2018, I study spending on food and alcohol following recreational marijuana legalization (RML). Exploiting differences in the timing of the passage of RMLs and employing differences-in-differences methods, I find that households...

Thirty-six states have legalized medical marijuana and 14 states have legalized the use of marijuana for recreational purposes. In this paper, we review the literature on the public health consequences of legalizing marijuana, focusing on studies that have appeared in economics journals as well...

Biologic drugs represent an important category of drugs that improve health outcomes in this country. Yet, these cutting-edge drugs are often prohibitively costly, preventing access for many Americans. Recognizing the need for more affordable, generic substitutes for biologic drugs — or...

Opioid abuse is currently the most significant public health problem in the US. Many US states have implemented prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) in response. In this paper, I use a new micro-level medical claims database to exploit state-level and time-series variations in PDMP...