Many US cities implemented indoor vaccine mandates to incentivize citizens to get vaccinated and reduce the spread of COVID-19. Previous research finds that similar country-level mandates increased vaccine uptake substantially. However, with city-level mandates, unvaccinated individuals could...

The increase in the global demand for avocados has attracted the attention of rent-seeking criminal organizations in Mexico. As a result, farmers and packing houses have become targets of drug cartels. This paper investigates whether declining drug revenues have motivated cartels to target licit...

Objectives: To assess differences in willingness to vaccinate children against COVID-19, and factors that may be associated with increased acceptance, among US caregivers of various racial and ethnic identities who presented with their child to the Emergency Department (ED) after emergency use...

In his Labor Day address, President Biden stated that the U.S. "has the highest drug prices in the world, and there is no reason for it." For new branded drugs, the first part of that statement is supported by a recent RAND Report (Mulcahy et. al. 2021) which found U.S. average prices are 2.3...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-19; HCoV-19; COVID-19) has affected all daily activities. Has it also affected the number of United States (FDA) drug approvals over time? The short answer from empirical time series forecasting is not yet. Care should be taken as the crisis...

As a major public health crisis, the opioid epidemic caused over 556,000 deaths in the U.S. between 2000 and 2020. To control the epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed some general guidelines, encouraging physicians to use opioid medications only when their...