Racial Difference in the Determinants of Smoking Onset

The large differences in youth smoking behavior across ethnic and racial groups are often overlooked in debates about prevention. This study examines how the determinants of the onset of smoking vary by race and ethnicity. Academic success is strongly associated with lower smoking rates among white youth, but this is not as true for Hispanics and African-Americans. Cultural assimilation may be an important determinant of smoking for Hispanics. Price increases do not appear to reduce smoking onset among white youth, but the results provide some support that higher prices will reduce smoking among Hispanic and African-American youth.     

News that takes your breath away: risk perceptions during an outbreak of vaping-related lung injuries

Journal of Risk and Uncertainty - We study the impact of new information on people’s perceptions of the risks of e-cigarettes. In September 2019 the U.S. experienced an outbreak of...     

Principal Agency Theory and Health Care Utilization

This article uses a principal agent framework to examine the role that monitoring costs faced by an insurer have on health care utilization. We compare hospital lengths of stay for fee-for-service and capitated patients in low and high monitoring cost situations. Monitoring costs associated with a particular procedure are assumed to be high when there is large variation across patients in hospital lengths of stay. The empirical results indicate that differences in utilization between fee-for-service and capitated patients increase as monitoring costs increase. However, we do not find that fee-for-service reimbursement is used less in the difficult to monitor situations. (JEL I1 )