Overdose deaths involving opioids have increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, leading to the worst drug overdose epidemic in U.S. history, but there is limited empirical evidence on the initial causes. In this paper, we examine the role of the 1996 introduction and marketing of OxyContin as...

This paper documents variation in working conditions among workers in the United States, presents new estimates of how workers value these conditions, and assesses the impact of working conditions on estimates of the wage structure and inequality. We use evidence from a series of...

There is considerable interest in understanding the broader effects of the opioid crisis on labor supply and social insurance programs in the United States. This paper examines how the recent transition of the opioid crisis from prescription opioids to more prevalent misuse of illicit opioids,...

Recent evidence suggests that the short-term transition of the opioid crisis from prescription opioids to heroin can be attributed to the reformulation of OxyContin, which substantially reduced access to abusable prescription opioids. In this paper, we find that over a longer time horizon,...

Over the last two decades, there has been a surge of opioid-related overdose deaths resulting in a myriad of state policy responses. Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of such policies using a wide-range of statistical models, each of which requires multiple design choices that can...

We study the effect of state recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on workers' compensation (WC) benefit receipt among adults 40-62 years. We find that WC receipt declines in response to RML adoption both in terms of the propensity to receive benefits and benefit amount. We estimate complementary...