july 2017 IZA DP No. 10917 Taking the CON out of Pennsylvania: Did Hip and Knee Replacement Patients Benefit?* Policymakers and the general public have expressed increasing concern over rising health care costs. The Certificate-of-Need (CON) programs began at the federal level in 1974 to stem the increase in costs by limiting hospital expansion and acquisition of equipment. The federal requirem...

This paper finds a strong positive correlation between female labor force participation and negative health outcomes for middle-aged men and women, and suggests that this correlation is mediated by household-level stress. At the crosscountry aggregate level, I show that labor force participation of women is associated with increased mortality rates among both men and women. At the individual le...

We test whether fi nancial incentives have an eff ect on weight reduction in a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental groups. While two treatment groups obtain €150 and €300, respectively, for achieving an individually assigned target weight within four months, a control group receives no such premium. The results indicate that the weight losses f...

Flu Shots, Mammograms, and the Perception of Probabilities We study individuals’ decisions to decline or accept preventive health care interventions such as flu shots and mammograms. In particular, we analyze the role of perceptions of the effectiveness of the intervention, by eliciting individuals’ subjective probabilities of sickness and survival, with and without the interventions. Responden...

Using longitudinal data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey (2001-2013) we examine the relationship between the dynamics of worklimiting disability and employment, hours of work, earnings and life satisfaction. We employ two alternative classifications of the dynamic trajectories of disability and, in doing so, are able to explicitly consider the influence...

Evidence on Individual Preferences for Longevity Risk The standard model of intertemporal choice assumes risk neutrality toward the length of life: due to additivity, agents are not sensitive to a mean preserving spread in the length of life. Using a survey fielded in the RAND American Life Panel (ALP), this paper provides empirical evidence on possible deviation from risk neutrality with respe...

The formation of human capital is important for a society's welfare and economic success. Recent literature shows that child health can provide an important explanation for disparities in children’s human capital development across different socio-economic groups. While this literature focuses on cognitive skills as determinants of human capital, it neglects non-cognitive skills. We analyze dat...

PurposeWe respond to some challenges in the transition to Sustainable Development Goals by examining the correlations between mobile and inclusive development (quality of growth, poverty and inequality) in 93 developing countries for the year 2011. Design/methodology/approachMobile money service entails: ‘mobile used to pay bills’ and ‘mobile used to receive/send money’. Interactive Ordinary Le...

Willingness to Accept Equals Willingness to Pay for Labor Market Estimates of the Value of Statistical Life Our research clarifies the conceptual linkages among willingness to pay for additional safety, willingness to accept less safety, and the value of statistical life (VSL). We present econometric estimates that in the important case of workers’ decisions concerning exposure to fatal injury ...