NBER
-
Using Machine Learning to Predict Mortality: Demystifying U.S. Healthcare Spending
•
Approximately one in every five dollars spent by Medicare is spent during a patient’s last twelve months of life, with most of this spending used to pay for inpatient medical care and physician costs. Despite taking up 20 percent of its budget, end-of-life cases account for just five percent of…
-
(Mis)Information, Immigration and Redistribution
•
The base of the Statue of Liberty, which happens to be a gift from a European country to the United States, reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” The ideas embodied in this phrase have been increasingly debated in recent years, not just…
-
Who Assesses the Assessors? Studying Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Data Quality
•
The current opioid epidemic is unprecedented in its scope, accounting for the deaths of 72,000 Americans in 2017 and surpassing deaths from car accidents and gun homicides combined. In response, policymakers have been attempting to find solutions. One attempted solution is the creation of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), databases…
-
Opioid Use and Employment: A Complicated Relationship
•
Opioid use can be traced back at least as far as the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., with notable crises worldwide in both the 19th and 20th centuries. However, today’s epidemic is “the worst drug addiction epidemic in [U.S.] history,” accounting for the deaths of 72,000 Americans in 2017…
-
Default Risk Dangers: The Effect of Downgrades in Public Credit on the Economy
•
Declining trust in a government’s fiscal health and a negative economic outlook often go hand in hand. It is generally accepted that the effects of a declining economy, such as an eroding tax base and an increasing need for public services, can strain a government’s budget. A new study, however,…
-
The Conflicting Outcomes of Food Price Shocks
•
Given the preponderance of violence and civil conflict in Africa, development practitioners are eager to understand the relationship between economic conditions and conflict. Conflict can negatively impact education, health, and state capacity—all important components of economic growth. While the negative consequences of conflict are clear, the conditions giving rise to…
-
Do Charter Schools Raise Student Earnings? Evidence from Texas
•
Texas education policy in the 1990s provided the blueprint for Bush-era school reforms. In 1993, the Texas legislature introduced high-stakes testing, followed by the authorization of Texas’ first charter schools—schools that are publicly funded but privately managed—in 1995. When George W. Bush left the Governor’s Mansion for the White House,…
-
How Does Compulsory Math Education Close the Racial Income Gap?
•
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education has been a national imperative for decades. More recent administrations have prioritized STEM in schools due to the rising importance of mathematical skills in the labor market. The American Competitive Initiative, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006, committed a…
-
Sustaining Human Capital Investment: Local Women Leaders in Conditional Cash Transfers
•
Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are social programs that provide stipends to low-income families and individuals who meet certain conditions, such as ensuring their children receive mandatory vaccinations or meet school attendance requirements. CCTs have had a positive impact on the lives of poor people, particularly in Latin America, by providing…
-
Do People Move to Gain Medicaid Benefits?
•
The welfare migration hypothesis proposes the idea that people will move to a location because of the availability of social welfare programs. Frequently studied in international development, it is equally applicable to internal migration in the United States due to the wide variation in social welfare programs across states. This variation…
-
¿Les estamos quitando sus empleos? Nueva evidencia sobre los braceros mexicanos en Estados Unidos
•
En el debate político actual, se ha vuelto común la afirmación de que los migrantes en el mercado laboral disminuyen los salarios de los trabajadores locales y les quitan sus empleos. Esta aseveración se basa en la teoría de que, a mayor oferta de trabajo, menor el precio que se…