Patient Knowledge and Antibiotic Abuse: Evidence from an Audit Study in China

We ask how patient knowledge of appropriate antibiotic usage affects both physicians prescribing behavior and the physician-patient relationship. We conduct an audit study in which a pair of simulated patients with identical flu-like complaints visits the same physician. Simulated patient A is instructed to ask a question that showcases his/her knowledge of appropriate antibiotic use, whereas patient B is instructed to say nothing beyond describing his/her symptoms. We find that a patient’s knowledge of appropriate antibiotics use reduces both antibiotic prescription rates and drug expenditures. Such knowledge also increases physicians’ information provision about possible side effects, but has a negative impact on the quality of the physician-patient interactions.

The Effects of Child-Bearing Policies in Remarriages: Evidence from China

In this paper we document the fertility policies for remarried couples in the People\u27s Republic of China, and investigate their effects on the women\u27s first marriages. Our evidence suggests that the child-bearing policies in remarriages have a significant effect on the characteristics of first marriages, including the ages of first marriage for the women, age gap, age of first child birth, age lapsed between first marriage and first child birth, number of children, and the divorce rates. We also plan to investigate whether these results are consistent with a forward-looking marriage model

Has Public Health Insurance for Older Children Reduced Disparities in Access to Care and Health Outcomes?

This paper investigates the effects of expanding public health insurance eligibility for older children. Using data from the National Health Interview Surveys from 1986 to 2005, we first show that although income continues to be an important predictor of children’s health status, the importance of income for predicting health has fallen for children 9 to 17 in recent years. We then investigate the extent to which the dramatic expansions in public health insurance coverage for these children in the past decade are responsible for the decline in the importance of income. We find that while eligibility for public health insurance unambiguously improves current utilization of preventive care, it has little effect on current health status. However, we find some evidence that Medicaid eligibility in early childhood has positive effects on future health. This may indicate that adequate medical care early on puts children on a better health trajectory, resulting in better health as they grow.

Accounting for the Change in the Gradient: Health Inequality among Infants

This study investigates changes in the relationship between maternal education and infant health using American Vital Statistics data from 1983 to 2000. I find that the disparity, as measured by infant deaths, between infants whose mothers have different levels of education, has remained constant over time while these differences, measured by Apgar scores, have been narrowing over the past two decades. This is in sharp contrast to the increasing disparities in health among adults of different educational backgrounds. A simple decomposition reveals that an increase in access to medical care is the dominant factor explaining the closing gap. Given that Hispanic women tend to have favorable birth outcomes while African-Americans tend to have worse-than-average infant outcomes, the gap has also declined because an increasing share of births to less-educated women was accounted for by Hispanics rather than by African-Americans. There are also several behavioral factors which have had an important impact. Namely, the gap has decreased because less-educated women smoke less, but this improvement is partially offset by an increase in the number of less educated women who gain excessive gestational weight. Finally, the gap has decreased because an increasing number of college-educated women are seeking fertility treatments