Can individuals' aversion to drug markets curb the benefits of decriminalization? We investigate the effect of two policies on housing demand in the Netherlands: the distance-to-school criterion, which closed some cannabis shops in a few cities; and the zero-tolerance policy, which banned shops...

The uncertainties associated with the precise nature of legalization regimes and with their expected outcomes sometimes are used to justify the maintenance of drug prohibition. This paper details the role that buyer licensing and exclusion might play in implementing a low-risk, post-prohibition...

Markets require informed participants to function efficiently. This paper examines the impact of providing targeted information directly to patients on their purchasing-decisions regarding pharmaceutical drugs. We analyze the effect of informational letters sent by a Swiss health insurer to...

This paper examines the impact of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA) of cholesterol-reducing drugs (statins) on consumers' market and non-market behaviors. Our research builds up on the existing literature by utilizing a unique set of data sets that combine extensive survey data on statins...

The majority of injecting drug users have hepatitis C yet they are not routinely treated for it in New Zealand. This paper investigates the cost and effectiveness of treating hepatitis C virus (HCV) for injecting drug users whose drug dependence has been stabilised. Two treatments options were...

Medicare Part D provides prescription drug coverage through Medicare approved plans offered by private insurance companies and HMOs. In this paper, we study the role of current prescription drug use and health risks, related expectations, and subjective factors in the demand for prescription...

Recent events have, once again, catapulted microbes into the forefront of media crisis-reporting. No sooner than the wandering TB-carrier evading the CDC's dragnet fades from our newspapers, (along with the sudden emergence and disappearance of SARS, the threat from Saddam's smallpox, and the...

The US is currently in the midst of the worst drug overdose epidemic in its history, with nearly 64,000 drug overdose deaths in 2016. In response, pharmaceutical companies have begun introducing abuse-deterrent painkillers, pills with properties that make the drug more difficult to misuse. The...

Mortality due to opioid overdoses has been growing rapidly in the U.S., with some states experiencing much steeper increases than others. Legalizing medical cannabis could reduce opioid-related mortality if potential opioid users substitute towards cannabis as a safer alternative. I show,...

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...