Nearly all the empirical literature on tort liability in the healthcare sector focuses on physicians. This paper is among the first to focus on products liability litigation against drug companies. We model and estimate the welfare effects of failure-to-warn suits, the most common type of tort...

The FDA employs an average-patient standard when reviewing drugs: it approves a drug only if the average patient (in clinical trials) does better on the drug than on control. It is common, however, for different patients to respond differently to a drug. Therefore, the average-patient standard...

This paper examines the incentives for countries to report disease outbreaks such as swine flu, avian flu and SARS to the international community. Even cursory analysis suggests countries have conflicting incentives regarding whether to report an outbreak. Reporting an outbreak may bring medical...

Academics and businesspeople have long debate the merits of corporate philanthropy. It is our contention that this debate is too narrowly focused on the role of corporations. There is a robust market for philanthropic works - which we call the market for altruism - in which non-profit...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza travels from migratory birds via domesticated fowl to humans. A prominent strategy for protecting humans from bird flu is to cull chickens. A hurdle to culling chickens is procuring chickens to be culled. Governments have two extreme options: pay for chickens or...

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...

When SARS struck Taiwan in the spring of 2003, many people feared that the disease would spread through the healthcare system. As a result, outpatient medical visits fell by over 30 percent in the course of a few weeks. This paper examines how both public information (SARS incidence reports) and...

In this paper I criticize the methodology of existing studies that purport to find evidence of placebo effects in medical trials. Among other things, because these studies fail to define and properly model placebo effects, it is hard to determine the power of their results. I address the problem...

Medical research and development (R&D) differs from other R&D because of a unique linkage between output and input markets for medical products: potential consumers of existing medical products are also potential subjects in clinical trials required to develop new products. Therefore, an...