It is commonly argued that in recent years pharmaceutical companies have directed their R&D towards small improvements of existing compounds instead of more risky drastic innovations. In this paper we show that the proliferation of these small innovations is likely to be linked to the lack of market sensitivity of a part of the demand to changes in prices. Compared to their social contribution,...

Cigarettes are commonly sold in packs of 20 units and therefore little is known about the potential impact of pack size on consumption. Using insights from behavioral economics, we suggest that cigarette packs smaller than the standard size may help some smokers cut back and/or quit, consistent with their long-term goals. Results from an online hypothetical purchase experiment conducted in a sa...

The danger of alcoholand drug-impaired driving implies that policies that reduce substance abuse can save lives. We study this issue in small US counties where access to substance abuse treatment can be measured directly through the presence of treatment facilities. We find that placing an additional treatment clinic in a county reduces the number of alcohol-related motor vehicle fatalities by ...

This paper uses the 2001 wave of National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) to assess the impact of marijuana decriminalization policy on marijuana smoking prevalence in Australia. Both parametric and non-parametric methods are used. The parametric approach postulates an endogenous probit switching model and its nested binary probit, endogenous bivariate probit and two-part models to estim...

Despite a strong interest in entrepreneurship, economists have devoted little attention to the role of health insurance availability. I investigate the impact of a unique policy experiment—New Jersey’s Individual Health Coverage Plan—on self-employment. Implemented in August 1993, the IHCP included an extensive set of reforms that loosened the historical connection between traditional employmen...

We investigate the impact of the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act on attitudes and behaviors, using newly available survey data from several thousand consumers. Consistent with prior literature, we find that the introduction of the standardized labels only modestly affected purchasing behavior. However, we find that the limited success of the policy is not attributable to inattention t...

We complement the empirical evidence on the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the fi rst time, rigorously examine the potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were fi rst assigned to two treatment groups, which were promised cash contingent on the achievement of an individually ...

【Keywords】Child malnutrition, Anthropometrics, Stunting, Wasting, Underweight, Social determinants of health, Millennium Development Goal (MDG), Health policies, Lao PDR (Laos) 【JEL classification】I18, O15, O21 【Abstract】The prevalence of stunting and underweight among Lao children is amongst the highest in the region. This paper provides a theoretical framework which integrates the mechanism o...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Health Care Cost Containment Measures Using SOEP panel data and difference-in-differences methods, this study is the first to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of four different health care cost containment measures within an integrated framework. The four measures investigated were introduced in Germany in 1997 to reduce moral hazard and public health expend...

The Affordable Care Act lets young adults stay on their parents’ insurance. Several recent papers use broad age-time difference-in-differences strategies to argue that this causes significant health insurance and labor effects. Using SIPP and CPS data, I show that difference-in-differences models over “placebo” dates also produce statistically significant “effects” long before ACA implementatio...