This paper analyzes the effects of federally-mandated program changes on state spending and revenues, incorporating and evaluating the predictive value of several common theories of the state decision-making process. Using several sources of exogenous increases in public medical spending, I...

Understanding how transient fiscal distress affects the stability and distribution of local budgets is increasingly important as control of public spending and revenues becomes more decentralized. This paper exploits the large and unexpected shock to county budgets imposed by capital crime...

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a massive global health crisis. Because the crisis requires large-scale behaviour change and places significant psychological burdens on individuals, insights from the social and behavioural sciences can be used to help align human behavior with the...

Although policy often emphasizes health care expansions to improve population health, neighborhood characteristics may also influence outcomes. Documenting the association between neighborhood features and health poses several empirical challenges, including the potential for bias from relying...

We analyze the impact of expanded adult Medicaid eligibility on the Medicaid enrollment of already-eligible children. To do so, we exploit the 2008 Oregon Medicaid lottery, in which some low-income uninsured adults were randomly selected for the chance to apply for Medicaid. Children in these...

There is increasing interest in expanding Medicare health insurance coverage in the U.S., but it is not clear whether the current program is the right foundation on which to build. Traditional Medicare covers a uniform set of benefits for all income groups and provides more generous access to...

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We suggest that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and are not likely to facilitate...

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We suggest that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and are not likely to facilitate...

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We suggest that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficiencies and are not likely to facilitate...