The Average and Distributional Effects of Teenage Adversity on Long-TermHealth
Publication date: Available online 12 February 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Jie Gong, Yi Lu, Huihua XieAbstractA central question in human development is what causes health inequalities over the life cycle. This paper links adversity in the teen years to individuals’ long-term health outcomes. We examine a mandatory rustication program, the“send-down” policy during China's Cultural Revolution, and employ a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact on individuals’ physical and mental health outcomes 40 years later. Our results suggest that rusticated youths were more likely to devel...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - February 14, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The relative value of different QALY types
Publication date: Available online 13 February 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Emily Lancsar, Yuanyuan Gu, Dorte Gyrd-Hansen, Jim Butler, Julie Ratcliffe, Liliana Bulfone, Cam DonaldsonAbstractThe oft-applied assumption in the use of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) in economic evaluation, that all QALYs are valued equally, has been questioned from the outset. The literature has focused on differential values of a QALY based on equity considerations such as the characteristics of the beneficiaries of the QALYs. However, a key characteristic which may affect the value of a QALY is the type of QALY itsel...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - February 14, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Confirmatory bias in health decisions: Evidence from the MMR-autism controversy
Publication date: Available online 10 February 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Mengcen Qian, Shin-Yi Chou, Ernest K. LaiAbstractSince Wakefield et al. (1998), the public was exposed to mixed information surrounding the claim that measles–mumps–rubella vaccine causes autism. A persistent trend to delay the vaccination during 1998–2011 in the US was driven by children of college-educated mothers, suggesting that these mothers held biases against the vaccine influenced by the early unfounded claim. Consistent with confirmatory bias, exposures to negative information about the vaccine strengthened their...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - February 11, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Did Parental Involvement Laws Grow Teeth? The Effects of State Restrictions on Minors’ Access to Abortion
Publication date: Available online 3 February 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Caitlin Myers, Daniel LaddAbstractWe compile data on the locations of abortion providers and enforcement of parental involvement laws to document dramatic increases in the distances minors must travel if they wish to obtain an abortion without involving a parent or judge: from 58 miles in 1992 to 454 in 2016. Using both double and triple-difference estimation strategies, we estimate the effects of parental involvement laws, allowing them to vary with the distances minors might travel to avoid them. Our results confirm previous f...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - February 5, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The Effect of Prenatal Maternity Leave on Short and Long-term Child Outcomes
Publication date: Available online 30 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Alexander Ahammer, Martin Halla, Nicole SchneeweisAbstractMaternity leave policies are designed to safeguard the health of pregnant workers and their unborn children. We evaluate a maternity leave extension in Austria which increased mandatory prenatal leave from 6 to 8 weeks. We exploit that the assignment to the extended leave was determined by a cutoff date. We find no evidence for significant effects of this extension on children's health at birth or long-term health and labor market outcomes. Subsequent maternal health and ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 31, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The Effect of the National Kidney Registry on the Kidney-Exchange Market
Publication date: Available online 30 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Roksana Ghanbariamin, Bobby W. ChungAbstractWe assess the causal effect of the National Kidney Registry (NKR), the largest national kidney-exchange network in the U.S., on kidney-exchange outcomes. Analyzing a unique database hosted by the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) that contains information on all kidney donors, wait-listed candidates, and transplant recipients in the U.S., we find that patients in an NKR hospital are 2.5 to 3 times more likely than their counterparts in a non-NKR hospital to receive a ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 31, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Mendelian Randomization analysis of the causal effect of adiposity on hospital costs
Publication date: Available online 25 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Padraig Dixon, William Hollingworth, Sean Harrison, Neil M. Davies, George Davey SmithAbstractEstimates of the marginal effect of measures of adiposity such as body mass index (BMI) on healthcare costs are important for the formulation and evaluation of policies targeting adverse weight profiles. Most estimates of this association are affected by endogeneity bias. We use a novel identification strategy exploiting Mendelian Randomization – random germline genetic variation modelled using instrumental variables – to identify t...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 26, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: January 2020Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 69Author(s): (Source: Journal of Health Economics)
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 24, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Editorial transitions in 2020
Publication date: January 2020Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 69Author(s): (Source: Journal of Health Economics)
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 24, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
When the market drives you crazy: Stock market returns and fatal car accidents
Publication date: Available online 20 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Corrado Giulietti, Mirco Tonin, Michael VlassopoulosAbstractThis paper provides evidence that daily fluctuations in the stock market have important–and hitherto neglected–spillover effects on fatal car accidents. Using the universe of fatal car accidents in the United States from 1990 to 2015, we find that a one standard deviation reduction in daily stock market returns is associated with a 0.6% increase in fatal car accidents that happen after the stock market opening. A battery of falsification tests support a causal inter...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 21, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Rebates as Incentives: The Effects of a Gym Membership Reimbursement Program
Publication date: Available online 18 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Tatiana Homonoff, Barton Willage, Alexander WillénAbstractA rich experimental literature demonstrates positive effects of pay-per-visit fitness incentives. However, most insurance plans that provide fitness incentives follow a different structure, offering membership reimbursements conditional on meeting a specific attendance threshold. We provide the first evidence in the literature on gym incentives of this structure, exploiting the introduction and subsequent discontinuation of a large-scale wellness program at a major Ameri...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 19, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Inequality aversion in income, health, and income-related health
Publication date: Available online 16 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Jeremiah Hurley, Emmanouil Mentzakis, Marjan Walli-AttaeiAbstractBased on a survey of a sample of the general public, we estimate inequality aversion across income, health, and bivariate income-health. Inequality aversion is domain specific: mean inequality aversion is greater for income than for health, but the underlying distributions of aversion attitudes differ, with a highly bi-modal distribution of inequality-aversion values for health in which nearly half the participants display very low aversion and nearly half display ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 18, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Squaring the cube: Towards an operational model of optimal universal health coverage
Publication date: Available online 16 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Jessica Ochalek, Gerald Manthalu, Peter C. SmithAbstractUniversal Health Coverage (UHC) has become a key goal of health policy in many developing countries. However, implementing UHC poses tough policy choices about: what treatments to provide (the depth of coverage); to what proportion of the population (the breadth of coverage); at what price to patients (the height of coverage). This paper uses a theoretical mathematical programming model to derive analytically the optimal balance between the range of services provided and th...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 18, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
A welfare-theoretic model consistent with the practice of cost-effectiveness analysis and its implications
Publication date: Available online 11 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Anirban BasuAbstractI look at three debates in the health economics literature in the context of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA): 1) inclusion of future costs, 2) discounting, and 3) consistency with a welfare-economic perspective. These debates thus far have been studied in isolation leading to confusion and lingering questions. I look at these three debates holistically and present a welfare theoretic model that is consistent with the practice of CEA and can help inform all of these three debates. It shows rationales for the...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 13, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Optimal hospital payment rules under rationing by waiting
Publication date: Available online 10 January 2020Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Hugh Gravelle, Fred SchroyenAbstractWe derive optimal rules for paying hospitals for non-emergency care when providers choose quality and capacity, and patient demand is rationed by waiting time. Waiting for treatment is costly for patients, so that hospital payment rules should take account of their effect on waiting time as well as on quality. Since deterministic waiting time models imply that profit maximising hospitals will never choose to have both positive quality and positive waiting time, we develop a stochastic model of...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - January 11, 2020 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
