Where do different generations spend their money?
Interesting graphic from the Visual Capitalist. Unsurprisingly health care spending increases on both a relative and absolute scale as people age. HT: The Browser.
Category: Economics – General
Are health care prices falling?
It seems like everything just gets more and more expensive. But are prices for medical care declining? Cutler et al. (1998) found in seminal paper “Are medical prices declining? Evidence for heart attack treatments” that while unadjusted prices of medical care were in fact rising, quality-adjusted health care costs actually were falling. In my own…
The origins of the Grossman ‘Demand for Health’ model
Michael Grossman’s “Demand for Health” model turns 50 this year. To celebrate, Dr. Grossman himself provided some reflections in an article in Health Economics this month. He notes that the ‘Grossman model’ relies on two fundamental concepts: (i) health–not health care–enters into the utility function; health care services are chosen by individuals but these are…
AMA recommends that physicians should learn about health economics
Should physicians learn about health economics? The American Medical Association (AMA) thinks so. In a statement from 2019, the organization stated The American Medical Association (AMA) today adopted new policy expanding its efforts aimed at ensuring all medical students and residents receive training in health care economics. Building on the AMA’s ongoing work to transform…
How did COVID-19 models differ when they were built by economists vs. epidemiologists
As the COVID-19 pandemic struck, policymakers looked to researchers to both predict the future trend of the pandemic as well as examine how different policy options would impact society. Both epidemiologists and economists rose to the challenge, creating a variety of models to help inform policy decisions. How did the models developed by economists and…
Where did the money from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) go?
That is the question answered in a paper by Autor et al. (2022). Some background on PPP: Congress enacted the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided uncollateralized, low-interest loans of up to $10 million to firms with fewer than 500 employees—loans that were forgivable on the condition that recipient firms maintained employment and wages at…
When is full health insurance not optimal
In many markets, however, we observe that lower income individuals do not purchase the most generous forms of health insurance. For instance, despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act–which provided subsidies to lower income individuals to purchase relatively generous insurance–some individuals preferred the less generous Association Health Plans (AHPs) also known as “skinny” health…
The Economics of Foster Care
This is something I knew very little about and thus Bald et al. (2022) NBER working paper was fascinating to read. They describe the key tension of foster care: failing to put at risk children in foster care may expose them to abuse or neglect; however putting too many at risk children into foster care…
Oleg Itskhoki wins Clark Medal
The 2022 winner of the John Bates Clark medal is Oleg Itskhoki. Each year, the medal goes to the American economist under the age of 40 who made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge. Below is a summary of his research from the American Economic Association (AEA) website. One key finding is…
Did health care productivity really decline in recent decades?
Based on analysis from National Income and Product Accounts (NIPAs), multifactor productivity (MFP) in the health care and social assistance sector declined by 0.4% per between 1987 and 2018. On the other hand, the economy as a whole experience a 0.9% increase in MFP. With new technology, telehealth, gene therapies, treatments going generic, is it…