We report a vehicle-fleet experiment with an economic incentive for keeping within speed limits using a speed-alert device. A traffic insurance scheme was simulated with a monthly bonus during two months reduced by a non-linear speeding penalty. Participants were randomly assigned into four treatment and two control groups. A third control group consists of drivers who had the device and were m...

New empirical evidence shows substantial heterogeneity in the altruism of healthcare providers. Spurred by this evidence, we build a spatial quality competition model with altruism heterogeneity. We fi nd that more altruistic healthcare providers supply relatively higher quality levels and position themselves closer to the center. Whether the social planner prefers more or less horizontal diff ...

We report an experiment in 3,000 villages that tested whether incentives improve aid efficacy. Villages received block grants for maternal and child health and education that incorporated relative performance incentives. Subdistricts were randomized into incentives, an otherwise identical program without incentives, or control. Incentives initially improved preventative health indicators, parti...

This paper studies three inter-related healthcare decisions: insurance, utilization, and expenditures. The model treats insurance as an endogenous variable with respect to both utilization and expenditures, addresses potential selection issues, and takes into account that the decisions to utilize healthcare and the level of treatment are determined by different decision makers. We employ semipa...

Professional norms are supposed to have a central role in the allocation of resources when consumers have inferior information about the characteristics of products. We argue that economic motives are nevertheless important to resource allocation when professional opinions differ. The argument is illustrated with an example from medical care. We find that physicians who experience a shortage of...

Western societies can reduce avoidable mortality and morbidity by better understanding the relationship between obesity and chronic disease. This paper examines the joint determinants of obesity and of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and elevated cholesterol. It analyzes a broadly representative Spanish dataset, the 1999 Survey on Disabilities, Impairments and Health Status, using a heal...

Health insurers increasingly compete on their networks of medical providers. Using data from Massachusetts’s insurance exchange, I find substantial adverse selection against plans covering the most prestigious and expensive “star” hospitals. highlight a theoretically distinct channel: consumers loyal to star hospitals incur high spending, conditional state, because they use these hospitals’ car...

Anthropometric Mobility During Childhood While childhood obesity has become a significant public health concern over the last few decades, knowledge concerning the origins of or persistence in childhood anthropometric measures is incomplete. Here, we utilize several nonparametric measures of mobility to assess the evolution of weight, height, and body mass index during early childhood. We find ...

Psychological studies find that video game play is associated with markers for violent and antisocial attitudes. It is plausible that these markers indicate either whetted or sated preferences for antisocial behavior. I investigate whether a proxy for video gaming is associated with the prevalence of various crimes and find evidence that gaming is associated with significant declines in crime a...

From 1977-2001, several US states mandated health insurance providers to offer coverage for infertility treatment. Although the majority of past literature has studied impacts on older women who are likely to seek treatment, this paper proposes that the mandates may have had a wider impact on the US population. Specifically, it may have given an option for younger women to delay birth due to th...