Does Medicare Save Lives? Card, David; Dobkin, Carlos; Maestas, Nicole
The Quarterly journal of economics,
05/2009, Letnik:
124, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Health insurance characteristics shift at age 65 as most people become eligible for Medicare. We measure the impacts of these changes on patients who are admitted to hospitals through emergency ...departments for conditions with similar admission rates on weekdays and weekends. The age profiles of admissions and comorbidities for these patients are smooth at age 65, suggesting that the severity of illness is similar on either side of the Medicare threshold. In contrast, the number of procedures performed in hospitals and total list charges exhibit small but statistically significant discontinuities, implying that patients over 65 receive more services. We estimate a nearly 1-percentage-point drop in 7-day mortality for patients at age 65, equivalent to a 20% reduction in deaths for this severely ill patient group. The mortality gap persists for at least 9 months after admission.
Market liberalization in emerging-market economies and the entry of multinational firms spur significant changes to the industry/institutional environment faced by domestic firms. Prior studies have ...described how such changes tend to be disruptive to the relatively backward domestic firms, and negatively affect their performance and survival prospects. In this paper, we study how domestic supplier firms may adapt and continue to perform, as market liberalization progresses, through catch-up strategies aimed at integrating with the industry's global value chain. Drawing on internalization theory and the literatures on upgrading and catch-up processes, learning and relational networks, we hypothesize that, for continued performance, domestic supplier firms need to adapt their strategies from catching up initially through technology licensing/collaborations and joint ventures with multinational enterprises (MNEs) to also developing strong customer relationships with downstream firms (especially MNEs). Further, we propose that successful catch-up through these two strategies lays the foundation for a strategy of knowledge creation during the integration of domestic industry with the global value chain. Our analysis of data from the auto components industry in India during the period 1992-2002, that is, the decade since liberalization began in 1991, offers support for our hypotheses.
We provide evidence of advantageous selection in the Medigap insurance market and analyze its sources. Conditional on controls for Medigap prices, those with Medigap spend, on average, $4,000 less on ...medical care than those without. But if we condition on health, those with Medigap spend $2,000 more. The sources of this advantageous selection include income, education, longevity expectations, and financial planning horizons, as well as cognitive ability. Conditional on all these factors, those with higher expected medical expenditures are more likely to purchase Medigap. Risk preferences do not appear as a source of advantageous selection; cognitive ability is particularly important.
We use linked birth and education records from Florida to investigate how the identification of childhood disabilities varies by race and school racial composition. Using a series of decompositions, ...we find that black and Hispanic students are identified with disabilities at lower rates than are observationally similar white students. Black and Hispanic students are overidentified in schools with relatively small shares of minorities and substantially underidentified in schools with large minority shares. Our results are consistent with a heightened awareness among school officials of disabilities in students who are racially and ethnically distinct from the majority race in the school.
This paper examines the trade-generation and reputation-building incentives facing sell-side analysts. Using a unique data set I demonstrate that optimistic analysts generate more trade for their ...brokerage firms, as do high reputation analysts. I also find that accurate analysts generate higher reputations. The analyst therefore faces a conflict between telling the truth to build her reputation versus misleading investors via optimistic forecasts to generate short-term increases in trading commissions. In equilibrium I show forecast optimism can exist, even when investment-banking affiliations are removed. The conclusions may have important policy implications given recent changes in the institutional structure of the brokerage industry.
Knowledge is recognized as a crucial element of economic growth in addition to physical capital and labor. Knowledge can be transformed into products and processes and is, in this way, exploited ...commercially. The ability to produce, identify, and exploit knowledge depends on the existing knowledge stock and the absorptive capacity of actors such as employees at firms and researchers at universities and research institutions. The existing knowledge stock might not be commercialized to its full extent; therefore, knowledge flows must occur and transmission channels are needed. The paper tests the hypotheses that entrepreneurship and university–industry relations are vehicles for knowledge flows and, thus, spur economic growth.
CEO Ability, Pay, and Firm Performance Chang, Yuk Ying; Dasgupta, Sudipto; Hilary, Gilles
Management science,
10/2010, Letnik:
56, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Do chief executive officers (CEOs) really matter? Do cross-sectional differences in firm performance and CEO pay reflect differences in CEO ability? Examining CEO departures over 1992-2002, we first ...find that the stock price reaction upon departure is negatively related to the firm's prior performance and to the CEO's prior pay. Second, the CEO's subsequent labor market success is greater if the firm's predeparture performance is better, the prior pay is higher, and the stock market's reaction is more negative. Finally, better prior performance, higher prior pay, and a more negative stock market reaction are associated with worse postdeparture firm performance. Collectively, these results reject the view that differences in firm performance stem entirely from non-CEO factors such as the firms' assets, other employees, or "luck," and that CEO pay is unrelated to the CEO's contribution to firm value.
This paper analyzes a puzzling aspect of retirement behavior known as "unretirement." Nearly 50 percent of retirees follow a nontraditional retirement path that involves partial retirement or ...unretirement, and at least 26 percent of retirees later unretire. I explore two possible explanations: (1) unretirement transitions result from failures in planning or financial shocks; and (2) unretirement transitions are anticipated prior to retirement, reflecting a more complex retirement process. I show that unretirement was anticipated for the vast majority of those returning to work, and is not a result of financial shocks, poor planning or low wealth accumulation.
PDF
