Experiments are being used to generate measures of characteristics of individuals that need to be controlled for economic analyses. Examples include the measurement of risk aversion, inequality aversion, and trust. Imprecision in measuring those characteristics may lead to misleading conclusions...

Holt and Laury, AER 2002, develop an experimental design to determine the risk aversion of an individual. They use their observations to argue that increased incentives appear to change risk attitudes, leading to greater risk aversion. However, their main treatment, the effects of scaling up the...

We propose and test a new method for eliciting curvature-controlled discount rates that are invariant to the form of the utility function. The advantage of this method is that individual discount rates can be obtained without knowledge of risk attitude or parametric assumptions about the form of...

Social programs are increasingly asked to do more with less, but how is this possible? In this paper we consider one such program, supported employment, which is designed to increase employment among adults with intellectual disabilities. We estimate a model which allows for heterogeneous...

Childhood overweight is now considered the most common health problem for children in the U.S. An important question is whether parents and policymakers will see rising medical expenditures for these children while they are still young. We estimate the overweight attributable fraction (OAF) of...

This paper considers the deterrent effect that self-regulation has on a patient's propensity to sue under malpractice law. A model of tort-driven self regulation is developed and its implications are examined using data on the disciplinary actions of the Florida Medical Board and data on closed...

Providing employment-related services, including supported employment through job coaches, has been a priority in federal policy since the enactment of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act in 1984. We take advantage of a unique panel data set of all clients served by...

It is widely accepted that individuals tend to underinsure against low-probability, high-loss events relative to high-probability, low-loss events. This conventional wisdom is based largely on field studies, as there is very little experimental evidence. We reexamine this issue with an...

This paper analyzes the role of referrals in the provision of surgical services. Primary physicians in managed care control patient access to specialists, while referrals in traditional insurance plans are less constrained. The traditional, fee-for-service insurance market is shown to achieve...

This article tests whether the use of endogenous risk categorization by insurers enables consumers to make better-informed decisions even if they do not choose to purchase insurance. We do so by adding a simple insurance market to an experimental test of optimal (Bayesian) updating. In some...