Cross-border health and productivity effects of alcohol policies

Cross-border health and productivity effects of alcohol policies.

This paper studies the cross-border health and productivity effects of alcohol taxes. We estimate the effect of a large cut in the Finnish alcohol tax on mortality, alcohol-related illnesses and work absenteeism in Sweden. This tax cut led to large differences in the prices of alcoholic beverages between these two countries and to a considerable increase in cross-border shopping. The effect is ...

Reflections on Health Tourism and Cross-Border Health Care

Cross Border Effects of State Health Technology Regulation

Certificate of Need (CON) laws, state laws requiring providers to obtain licenses before adopting health-care technology, have been controversial. The effect of CON on technology supply has not been well established. In part this is because analyses have focused on state-level supply effects, which may reflect either the consequence of CON regulation on supply or the cause for its adoption or r...

Public Provision and Cross-Border Health Care

We study how the optimal public provision of health care depends on whether or not individuals have an option to seek publicly financed treatment in other regions. We find that, relative to the first-best solution, the government has an incentive to over-provide health care to low-income individuals. When crossborder health care takes place, this incentive is solely explained by that overprovis...

Alcohol and Drug Use at the U.s.-mexico Border - Does Cross-border Mobility Make a Difference?

People of Mexican origin constitute the largest subgroup of Hispanics in the U.S., comprising over 65% of this group and 11% of the total U.S. population, a figure which is expected to double by 2050 [1]. Mexicans represent 29% of the U.S. immigrant population, with Mexico being the largest contemporary source of immigration. The U.S. side of the border has become home to many of these individu...