This dissertation consists of three essays that study preventive health behaviors among the elderly U.S.population. The first essay studies the effect of Medicare coverage on demand for the influenza vaccine. I use apropensity score matching estimator to look at the effect of the 1993 Medicare...

In this dissertation, I discuss two important factors in individuals' decision-making processes: subjective expectation bias and time-inconsistent preferences. In Chapter I, I look at how individuals' own subjective expectations about certain future events are different from what actually...