"The growth of medical malpractice liability costs has the potential to affect the delivery of health care in the U.S. along two dimensions. If growth in malpractice payments results in higher malpractice insurance premiums for physicians, these premiums may affect the size and composition of...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We use simple economic insights to develop a framework for distinguishing between prejudice and statistical discrimination using...

Obtaining better information on the quality of health care providers is one of the most pressing issues in health policy today. In this paper we (1) develop a new method for measuring quality of care that overcomes the key limitations of available quality measures, and (2) apply this method to...

Inefficiency in the U.S. health care system has often been characterized as quot;flat of the curvequot; spending providing little or no incremental value. In this paper, we draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to better explain the empirical patterns of outcome improvements...

Inefficiency in the U.S. health care system has often been characterized as "flat of the curve" spending providing little or no incremental value. In this paper, we draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to better explain the empirical patterns of outcome improvements in...

Productivity spillovers are often cited as a reason for geographic specialization in production. A large literature in medicine documents specialization across areas in the use of surgical treatments, which is unrelated to patient outcomes. We show that a simple Roy model of patient treatment...