Redistribution at the hospital

This paper studies redistribution by means of a public supply of medical treatment. We show that the government can redistribute income towards low-ability individuals in a world of asymmetric information by offering bundles of medical treatment and redistributive payment. If self-selection is a problem, then the separating scheme offers high-ability individuals complete treatment against a high payment, and low-ability individuals partial treatment against a low payment. In particular, the level of treatment offered low-ability individuals is distorted downwards.health; medical treatment; insurance; redistribution; self-selection

Emblemata: The emblem books of Andrea Alciato

A study of the life and works of the legal scholar and humanist, Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), the originator of the emblem book. The nature of the emblem is elucidated and placed in its historical, intellectual and artistic contexts, with special attention paid to the many and varied published manifestations of Alciato???s emblems from 1531 to 1621.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Williams, L. (2016). Emblem of faith untouched: A short life of Thomas Cranmer (Book Review)

Williams, L. (2016). Emblem of faith untouched: A short life of Thomas Cranmer. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans. 208 pp. $18.00. ISBN 978080287418

Health Insurance: Treatment vs. Compensation

In this paper, we view health insurance as a combined hedge against the two consequences of falling ill: treatment expenditures and loss in income. We discuss how an individual’s ability when healthy affects her decision on whether to buy health insurance with treatment to full recovery if ill or with partial treatment combined with cash compensation for the resulting loss in income. We find that a highability individual demands full recovery and is fully insured, while a low-ability individual demands partial treatment and cash compensation and is only partly insured.Health Insurance; Treatment; Compensation

Essays On Political Economy And Behavior

This dissertation consists of three essays which focus on the intersection of political economy and behavioral economics. I am interested in understanding how people behave in politically adjacent areas so that we can find the policy interventions that can best address the issues that arise from these areas. To do so, I utilize incentivized survey instruments and laboratory experiments to study how people behave in these settings. In Chapter 1, I examine the question of how people respond to standard political surveys and whether these surveys reflect people’s genuine beliefs regarding factual political questions. Responses to standard political surveys suggest that Republicans and Democrats do not agree on the correct answer to factual political questions, which taken at face value might suggest that implementing policies that allocate time and money to information campaigns would be a good idea. However, if responses to standard political surveys do not reflect people’s genuine beliefs, then such a policy would end up wasting time and money. In Chapter 2, I examine whether conspiracy theory endorsement is associated with behavioral differences relevant to economic contexts such as the workplace or broader economic growth. Contemporary discussions about conspiracy theory endorsement in popular media suggest that it is problematic and that policy interventions that would curtail endorsement would be worthwhile, so we want to understand in which behavioral areas conspiracy theory endorsement could lead to problems. In Chapter 3, I look at how in localized, small group settings, social norms in favor of a minority preference can form. The standard conception of social norms is that they represent majority preferences, so this third chapter provides an initial investigation into how social norms that represent minority preferences can form. Understanding the circumstances under which social norms representing relatively unpopular actions and behaviors can form is relevant for knowing when policy interventions that try to push individuals to take a different action are more (or less) likely to succeed

Emblematica Online: Emblem Digitization, The German Emblem Database, and The OpenEmblem Portal

This proposal requests funding to present emblem books in a digital environment and to develop a portal for a key genre of Renaissance texts and images. Emblematica Online will fulfill its goals through its three constituent activities: 1) Emblem Digitization: the complete digitization of two premiere emblem collections of world-wide prominence; 2) The German Emblem Databases: the creation of extensive metadata with broad functionality for the German emblems of both institutions in mirror websites; and 3) The OpenEmblem Portal: the development of the portal as an open access research site incorporating book-level metadata from emblem digitization projects worldwide and emblem-level metadata from Illinois and the Herzog August Bibliothek (HAB). The OpenEmblem Portal hosted at Illinois will have a mirror portal at the HAB

Horse and Buggy Crash Study II: Overstretching the Slow-Moving Vehicle Emblem\u27s Abilities: Lessons from the Swartzentruber Amish

For decades, the Swartzentruber sect of Amish have, for religious reasons, rejected state-level mandates for horse-drawn buggies to display the S.M.V. (slow-moving vehicle) emblem. Court cases in several states have suggested (1) confusion over what the emblem is supposed to accomplish, and (2) questions about the emblem\u27s superiority to alternatives. Synthesizing evidence presented in several court cases involving the S.M.V. emblem and the Swartzentruber Amish, this study clarifies what the S.M.V. emblem can be expected to accomplish and in which domains it reaches its limits. The evidence is organized categorically and presented as a series of cues presented to the motorist. Findings suggest that while S.M.V. emblem serves well as a generic indicator of something demanding attention, it is less effective in symbolic communicating what it is that needs attention and the motorist’s approaching time. Further, the S.M.V. emblem may be counterproductive when a motorist passes a buggy, as the bright splash of color draws attention to the center of the buggy rather than communicating buggy width