-
作者：Gray, Charles; Alpert, Abby; Sood, Neeraj
作者单位：University of Pennsylvania; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Southern California
摘要：The pharmaceutical market has experienced a wave of vertical integration between pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and insurers in recent years. Using a unique dataset on insurer-PBM contracts, we document increasing vertical integration in Medicare Part D. Next, we evaluate the effects of a large insurer-PBM merger in 2015, assessing the trade-offs of vertical integration-harms to competition on the one hand and improved efficiency on the other. We find premium increases for rival insurers pos...
-
作者：Leung, Justin H.; Li, Zhonglin
作者单位：Chinese University of Hong Kong; National University of Singapore
摘要：This paper documents an increase in the concentration of household shopping in the United States retail sector from 2004 to 2019. Despite a growing number of stores, households visit fewer stores, do more one-stop shopping, and increasingly shop at different retailers from each other. We find that the increasing availability of superstar retailers, the rise in product variety within stores, and the rise of online shopping contribute to these trends. We explore how these trends are linked with ...
-
作者：Voigtlander, Nico; Voth, Hans-Joachim
作者单位：University of California Los Angeles; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Zurich
摘要：We show that the building of the Autobahn network in Nazi Germany boosted popular support forAdolf Hitler, helping to entrench the Nazi dictatorship. Direct local economic benefits are unlikely to explain the effect. Instead, it reflects successful propaganda: The regime portrayed the Autobahn as a symbol of recovery and the end of austerity. Support rose particularly strongly where highway construction coincided with greater radio availability and in politically unstable regions. Our findings...
-
作者：Baruffaldi, Stefano; Gaessler, Fabian
作者单位：Polytechnic University of Milan; Barcelona School of Economics; Pompeu Fabra University
摘要：We investigate the nature and relevance of physical capital in knowledge production. Exploiting adverse events in research laboratories, we find that scientists experience a persistent reduction in research output if they lose specialized physical capital-equipment and material they created over time for a particular research purpose. In contrast, they recover in productivity if they only lose generic physical capital. Scientists in older laboratories, who presumably lose more obsolete physica...
-
作者：Andersen, Steffen; Colmsjo, Elin; Parise, Gianpaolo; Peijnenburg, Kim
作者单位：Copenhagen Business School; University of Copenhagen; Tilburg University
摘要：Exploiting plausibly exogenous variations in the timing of cancer diagnoses, we establish that health shocks elicit a large and persistent increase in the probability of committing a crime. This effect materializes in a substantial rise in both first crimes and re-offenses. We uncover evidence for two mechanisms. First, an economic motive leads individuals to compensate the loss of legal revenues with illegal earnings. Second, cancer patients face lower expected cost of punishment through a lo...
-
作者：Freedman, Seth; Sacks, Daniel W.; Simon, Kosali; Wing, Coady
作者单位：Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington; University of Wisconsin System; University of Wisconsin Madison; Indiana University System; Indiana University Bloomington
摘要：We estimate direct and indirect vaccine effectiveness and assess how far the infection-reducing externality extends from the vaccinated, a key input to policy decisions. Our empirical strategy uses nearly universal microdata from a single state and relies on the six-month delay between 12-and 11-year-old COVID vaccine eligibility. Vaccination reduces cases by 80 percent, the direct effect. This protection spills over to close contacts, producing a household-level indirect effect about three-fo...
-
作者：Terrier, Camille; Pathak, Parag A.; Ren, Kevin
作者单位：University of London; Queen Mary University London; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); National Bureau of Economic Research; Northwestern University
摘要：Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems for student placement. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. We investigate the effects of the national ban of IA in England. Before the ban, 49 local authorities used DA and 16 used IA; all switched to DA afterward. We find that the elimination of IA reduces measures of school quality for low-SES students more than high-SES students. This effect is primarily driven ...
-
作者：Bentzen, Jeanet Sinding; Pizzigolotto, Alessandro; Sperling, Lena Lindbjerg
作者单位：University of Copenhagen
摘要：Can policies shape personal values and beliefs? To examine, we exploit the staggered introduction of faith-based initiatives across US states. Our difference-in-differences analysis reveals that the initiatives strengthened religiosity and conservative-religious social views, such as attitudes against homosexuals. The evidence points to causal effects; we find no systematic differences prior to implementation, the results are robust to restricting comparison to contiguous counties and to condu...
