Central governments or the international community at large are concerned about subnational service delivery. The design of targeted expenditure programs features frequently in central efforts to redistribute infrastructure and social spending or assure minimum standards. These programs are...

As health care consumes a growing share of GDP, the demand for better evidence regarding the effects of health care treatments and how these vary across individuals is increasing. Estimating this with observational data is difficult given the endogeneity of treatment decisions. But because the...

This dissertation is two essays that examine the impact of two distinct structural changes in hospitals. The first essay examines whether legislated changes in the minimum postpartum length of stay improve health outcomes for newborns. The second essay examines the consequences of nurse unions...

Between 1971 and 1996 opponents of local funding for public schools successfully challenged the constitutionality of school-finance systems in sixteen states. Using the variation across states in the timing of these cases the authors investigate the impact of reform on the distribution of school...

This paper examines empirically the effects of multimarket contact on pricing in the U.S. airline industry. The analysis of the time-series and cross-sectional variability of airline fares in the 1,000 largest domestic city-pair routes reveals the presence of statistically significant and...

Surveys of individual's risk-dollar trade-offs illuminate not only the local trade-off rates, but also can be used to address more fundamental questions about the structure of utility functions. This largely unexplored empirical area is investigated by developing an econometric technique to...