There have been relatively few evaluations of the effect of private insurance and Medicaid on infant health, and results from previous studies are inconclusive. The objective of this study if to estimate the effect of private insurance coverage and Medicaid participation on birth weight and the...

Using the 1984 and 1988 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study provides an update of several previous cross-sectional estimates of the effect of illicit drug use on wages, as well as the first longitudinal estimates of that effect. The cross-sectional results, which are...

Policy-makers have argued that providing public health insurance coverage to the uninsured lowers long-run costs by reducing the need for expensive hospitalizations and emergency department visits later in life. In this paper, we provide evidence for such a phenomenon by exploiting a legislated...

We study the effect of immigration of foreign-trained, registered nurses (RNs) on the employment and wages of US-trained RNs. We use the “area” approach and study effects of immigration in labor markets defined by the state. We find substantial evidence that immigration by foreign-trained...

The author empirically examines the effect on youth employment of government-mandated employer-provided benefits. In particular, he investigates the effect of unemployment compensation insurance taxes and workers' compensation insurance mandates on the employment of youths (aged 16-19) and young...

Using the 1984 and 1988 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study provides an update of several previous cross-sectional estimates of the effect of illicit drug use on wages, as well as the first longitudinal estimates of that effect. The cross-sectional results, which are...

In this paper, I test whether a variety of social and economic factors are significantly related to an individuals family structure. I focus on the relationship between one particular type of family structure, a never married parent, and three variables: drug use, the generosity of welfare...

By exploiting a unique health insurance benefit design, we provide novel evidence on the causal association between outpatient and inpatient care. Our results indicate that greater outpatient spending was associated with more hospital admissions: a $100 increase in outpatient spending was...