Despite the popularity of pay-for-performance (P4P) among health policymakers and private insurers as a tool for improving quality of care, there is little empirical basis for its effectiveness. The authors use data from published performance reports of physician medical groups contracting with...

This research examines whether teacher licensure test scores and other teacher qualifications affect middle school student achievement. The results are based on longitudinal student-level data from Los Angeles. The achievement analysis uses a value-added approach that adjusts for both student...

How do potential recruits decide to enlist in the military? What information do they seek on which to base career decisions? The Internet increasingly provides a medium for advertising and communication with recruiters and other potential recruits. The authors explored the influence of online...

The authors present a generalized solution to Grossman's model of health capital (1972), relaxing the widely used assumption that individuals can adjust their health stock instantaneously to an "optimal" level without adjustment costs. The Grossman model then predicts the existence of a health...

We exemine two potential modes of local empowerment: "dominance, " whereby each group is the majoriy of voters in single election districts ( reinforcing separative tendencies) , and "influence" whereby a group gains "influential minority" status in several districts ( reinforcing unifying...

Forty years ago, Simon Kuznets, in his presidential address to the American Economics Association, outlined his hypothesis that the process of economic development would first be accompanied by rising disparities in economic well-being, followed by a period when the distribution wouls be stable...

Mental health disorders in adolescence are pervasive, often carry into adulthood, and appear to be inversely associated with social status. We examine how structural aspects of neighborhood context, specifically, socioeconomic stratification and racial/ethnic segregation, affect adolescent...

This paper is focused on two issues. Firstly, to what extent can we explain the observed mortality decline and secondly, can we attribute the observed chinese advantage to demographic or behavioural factors?