A government agency delegates to a provider (hospital, medical gatekeeper, school, social worker) the decision to supply a service or treatment to individual recipients. The agency does not perfectly know the distribution of individual treatment costs in the population. The single-crossing property is not satisfied when the uncertainty pertains to the dispersion of the distribution. We find tha...

Existing economic models of suicide provide no systematic means of addressing how suicidal persons choose their suicide methods. In this article, the tools of search theory are used to characterize suicidal persons’ choices about when, how, and whether to commit suicide in a dynamic context. The theory has implications for policies a¤ecting the availability of suicide methods such as guns. Amon...

Should polio be eradicated worldwide, countries must decide whether to continue to vaccinate with the live-attenuated vaccine, to continue to vaccinate with the alternative, killed vaccine, or to cease vaccinating. To reap a dividend from polio eradication, countries must choose the last option, but vaccination cessation entails interdependent risks as well as rewards. This article models the p...

Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We estimate the impact of abortion laws on sexual behavior by reported gonorrhea incidence. Our data panel includes 41 countries for which consistent gonorrhea data are available for 1980–2000. Compared with laws permitting abortion only to save the pregnant woman’s life o...

There exist congenital diseases that reduce newborns' potential opportunities. This reduction is sometimes alleviated if the congenital disease is early detected thanks to a newborn screening program. We propose an outcome measurement of newborn screening programs based on the opportunity gains they offer after its implementation. We show that, under plausible assumptions, preferences among the...

The paper evaluates an Indian maternal conditional cash transfer scheme. Launched in 2005, the program gives women cash transfers for receiving maternal and child health care services. This paper uses data from India’s District Level Household Survey to evaluate the program’s impact. Results indicate that the program had a limited overall effect: relative to the broader population, the targeted...

Using controlled experiments, we examine how individuals make choices when faced with multiple options. Choice tasks are designed to mimic the selection of health insurance, prescription drug, or retirement savings plans. In our experiment, available options can be objectively ranked allowing us to examine optimal decision making. First, the probability of a person selecting the optimal option ...

We study a key part of NHS policy to ensure high quality health care: failure to supply such care cost the NHS £787m in clinical negligence payouts during 2009-10. The NHS uses risk management standards to incentivise care and we examine their effects on MRSA infections. Using a specially assembled dataset, our GMM results suggest that improvements in the risk management standards attained by s...

Improving Nurse Retention in the British National Health Service: The Impact of Job Satisfaction on Intentions to Quit In recent years the National Health Service (NHS) in Britain has experienced an acute shortage of qualified nurses. This has placed issues of recruitment and retention in the profession high on the political agenda. In this paper we investigate the determinants of job satisfact...