We report on a large randomized controlled trial of hospital insurance for above poverty-line Indian households. Households were assigned to free insurance, sale of insurance, sale plus cash transfer, or control. To estimate spillovers, the fraction of households offered insurance varied across...

Universal health coverage is a widely shared goal across lower-income countries. We conducted a large-scale, 4-year trial that randomized premiums and subsidies for India's first national, public hospital insurance program, RSBY. We find roughly 60% uptake even when consumers were charged...

Universal health coverage is a widely shared goal across lower-income countries. We conducted a large-scale, 4-year trial that randomized premiums and subsidies for India's first national, public hospital insurance program, RSBY. We find roughly 60% uptake even when consumers were charged...

Financial ties between drug companies and medical researchers are thought to bias studies published in medical journals. To enable readers to account for such bias, most medical journals require authors to disclose potential conflicts of interest. We examine whether disclosure reduces article...

Financial ties between drug companies and medical researchers are thought to bias results published in medical journals. To enable readers to account for such bias, most medical journals require authors to disclose potential conflicts of interest. For such policies to be effective, conflict...

In this paper I explore estimation of treatment response in blinded clinical trials when there exist placebo effects, i.e., when health outcomes are a function of not just the physiological effects of treatment, but also beliefs about treatment efficacy and treatment state. First, I argue that...

Blockchain technology offers firms a novel method of raising capital, via so-called Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). In the most novel form of an ICO, a firm creates digital assets called “utility tokens” that are tracked on a blockchain-based ledger; requires that its product be purchased...

A medical treatment is said to have placebo effects if patients who are optimistic about the treatment respond better to the treatment. This paper proposes a simple test for placebo effects. Instead of comparing the treatment and control arms of a single trial, one should compare the treatment...