Medical Innovation, Education, and Labor Market Outcomes of Cancer Patients

Innovations in cancer treatment have lowered mortality, but little is known about their economic benefits. We assess the effect of two decades of improvements in cancer treatment options on the labor market outcomes of breast and prostate cancer patients. In addition, we compare this effect across cancer patients with different levels of educational attainment. We estimate the effect of medical innovation on cancer patients’ labor market outcomes employing tax return and cancer registry data from Canada and measuring medical innovation by using the number of approved drugs and a quality-adjusted patent index. While cancer patients are less likely to work after their diagnosis, we find that the innovations in cancer treatment during the 1990s and 2000s reduced the negative employment effects of cancer by 63–70 percent. These benefits of medical innovation are limited to cancer patients with postsecondary education, raising concerns about unequal access to improved treatment options

Time Trends Matter: The Case of Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Overdose Mortality

Mortality due to opioid overdoses has been growing rapidly in the U.S., with some states experiencing much steeper increases than others. Legalizing medical cannabis could reduce opioid-related mortality if potential opioid users substitute towards cannabis as a safer alternative. I show, however, that a substantial reduction in opioid-related mortality associated with the implementation of medical cannabis laws can be explained by selection bias. States that legalized medical cannabis exhibit lower pre-existing mortality trends. Accordingly, the mitigating effect of medical cannabis laws on opioid-related mortality vanishes when I include state-specific time trends in state-year-level difference-in-differences regressions

Time Trends Matter: The Case of Medical Cannabis Laws and Opioid Overdose Mortality

Mortality due to opioid overdoses has been growing rapidly in the U.S., with some states experiencing much steeper increases than others. Legalizing medical cannabis could reduce opioid-related mortality if potential opioid users substitute towards cannabis as a safer alternative. I show, however, that a substantial reduction in opioid-related mortality associated with the implementation of medical cannabis laws can be explained by selection bias. States that legalized medical cannabis exhibit lower pre-existing mortality trends. Accordingly, the mitigating effect of medical cannabis laws on opioid-related mortality vanishes when I include state-specific time trends in state-year-level difference-in-differences regressions

Health Shocks, Human Capital, and Labor Market Outcomes

Health, human capital, and labor market outcomes are linked through complex connections that are not fully understood. We explore these links by estimating a flexible yet tractable dynamic model of human capital accumulation in the presence of health shocks using administrative data from Chile. We find that (i) human capital mitigates the negative labor market effects of health events, (ii) these alleviating effects operate through channels involving occupational choice, the frequency of exposure to health events, and access to health care, and (iii) the effect of health shocks on labor market outcomes is heterogeneous across industries and types of diagnoses

Health Shocks, Human Capital, and Labor Market Outcomes

Health, human capital, and labor market outcomes are linked through complex connections that are not fully understood. We explore these links by estimating a flexible yet tractable dynamic model of human capital accumulation in the presence of health shocks using administrative data from Chile. We find that (i) human capital mitigates the negative labor market effects of health events, (ii) these alleviating effects operate through channels involving occupational choice, the frequency of exposure to health events, and access to health care, and (iii) the effect of health shocks on labor market outcomes is heterogeneous across industries and types of diagnoses

The Effect of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries on Opioid and Heroin Overdose Mortality

Opioid overdose is the most common cause of accidental death in the United States and no policy response has been able to contain this epidemic to date. We examine whether local access to medical cannabis can reduce opioid-related mortality. Using a unique data set of medical cannabis dispensaries combined with county-level mortality data, we estimate the effect of dispensaries operating in a county on the number of overdose deaths. We find that counties with dispensaries experience 6% to 8% fewer opioid-related deaths among non-Hispanic white men. Mortality involving heroin declines by approximately 10% following the opening of a dispensary

Multiple Testing and the Distributional Effects of Accountability Incentives in Education

Economic theory that underlies many empirical microeconomic applications predicts that treatment responses depend on individuals’ characteristics and location on the outcome distribution. Using data from a large-scale Pakistani school report card experiment, we consider tests for treatment effect heterogeneity that make corrections for multiple testing to avoid an overestimation of positive treatment effects. These tests uncover evidence of policy-relevant heterogeneous effects from information provision on child test scores. Further, our analysis reinforces the importance of preventing the inflation of false positive conclusions since over 65% of the estimated statistically significant quantile treatment effects become insignificant once these corrections are applied

The Effect of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries on Opioid and Heroin Overdose Mortality

Opioid overdose is the most common cause of accidental death in the United States and no policy response has been able to contain this epidemic to date. We examine whether local access to medical cannabis can reduce opioid-related mortality. Using a unique data set of medical cannabis dispensaries combined with county-level mortality data, we estimate the effect of dispensaries operating in a county on the number of overdose deaths. We find that counties with dispensaries experience 6% to 8% fewer opioid-related deaths among non-Hispanic white men. Mortality involving heroin declines by approximately 10% following the opening of a dispensary

Patient versus provider incentives in long-term care

How do patient and provider incentives affect the provision of long-term care? Our analysis of 551 thousand nursing home stays yields three main insights. First, Medicaid-covered residents prolong their stays instead of transitioning to community-based care due to limited cost-sharing. Second, when facility capacity binds, nursing homes shorten Medicaid stays to admit more profitable out-of-pocket private payers. Third, providers react more elastically to financial incentives than patients. Thus, targeting provider incentives through alternative payment models, such as episode-based reimbursement, is more effective than increasing patient cost-sharing in facilitating transitions to community-based care and generating long-term care saving

Minimum Wages and Healthy Diet

A healthy diet is often unaffordable for low-income individuals, so income-lifting policies may play an important role in not only alleviating poverty but also in improving nutrition. We investigate if higher minimum wages can contribute to an improved diet by increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables. Exploiting recent minimum wage increases in the U.S. and using individual-level data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System we identify the causal effect of minimum wage changes on fruit and vegetable intake among low-wage individuals in a triple-differences framework. Our results indicate that higher minimum wages contribute positively but moderately to improved nutrition