Economics and Emigration: Trillion-Dollar Bills on the Sidewalk?

Bills on the Sidewalk: Suboptimal Investment in 401(k) Plans

We identify employees at seven companies whose 401(k) investment choices are dominated because they are contributing less than the employer matching contribution threshold despite being vested in their match and being able to make penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for any reason because they are older than 591⁄2. At the average firm, 36% of match-eligible employees over age 591⁄2 forgo arbitrage ...

Information technology: the trillion-dollar opportunity

Health Affairs A Trillion - Dollar Geography Lesson

Dartmouth researchers have demonstrated that there is tremendous geographic variation in the efficiency of health care delivery systems, fostered by perverse incentives that penalize integration, reward fragmentation, and encourage the use of technologies in the “gray areas” of medicine. This research suggests that it is possible to deliver higher-quality care at lower cost. We argue that integ...

The Trillion Dollar Conundrum: Complementarities and Health Information Technology

We examine the heterogeneous relationship between the adoption of electronic medical records (EMR) and hospital operating costs at thousands of U.S. hospitals between 1996 and 2009. Combining data from multiple sources, we first identify a puzzle that has been seen in prior studies: Adoption of EMR is generally associated with a slight increase in costs. We draw on the literature on information...

$100 Bills on the Sidewalk: Violations of No-Arbitrage in 401(k) Accounts

We identify employees at seven companies whose 401(k) investment choices are dominated because they are contributing less than the employer matching contribution threshold despite being vested in their match and being able to make penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for any reason because they are older than 591⁄2. At the average firm, 36% of match-eligible employees over age 591⁄2 forgo arbitrage ...