Why States Are So Miffed about Medicaid — Economics, Politics, and the “Woodwork Effect”

Why People Are Irrational about Politics

Perhaps the most striking feature of the subject of politics is how prone it is to disagreement—only religion and morality rival politics as a source of disagreement. There are three main features of political disagreements I want to point out: (i) They are very widespread. It isn’t just a few people disagreeing about a few issues; rather, any two randomly-chosen people are likely to disagree a...

Why are physicians so upset about managed care?

Why are evergreen leaves so contrary about shade?

Leaf mass per area (LMA) is one of the most widely measured of all plant functional traits. In deciduous forests, there is similarity between plastic and evolutionary responses of LMA to light gradients. In evergreens, however, LMA is lower in shaded than sunlit individuals of the same species, whereas shade-tolerant evergreens have higher LMA than light-demanders grown under the same condition...

Why are so many people so unashamedly selfish about the prospect of combating aging?

165 ABRIEF PERUSAL OF MY PUBLICATION RECORD will reveal something about my recent activities that may—indeed, probably should—strike you as sad: I hardly contribute anything to the biogerontology literature any more, essentially restricting myself instead to my characteristic outbursts in this space and the occasional invited book chapter. Ultimately, however, this is not a reason for sympathy,...

Why did the SSI-disabled program grow so much? Disentangling the effect of Medicaid.

The number of participants in the SSI program grew by 1.1 million from 1987 to 1993. This paper examines the role of Medicaid on the SSI participation decision. I use the rapid growth in average Medicaid expenditure as a proxy for its value. OLS estimates of Medicaid's effect may be biased because of omitted variables bias and measurement error. I therefore apply two-stage least squares to esti...