Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On The Market Structure Of The U.S. Health Care System, Ayse S. Diebel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the welfare implications of vertical restraints in the U.S. health care market. I focus on two phenomena that influence vertical relationships between hospitals and insurers: vertical integration and vertical bundling. Both of these practices have potential efficiency-inducing and anti-competitive effects from a theoretical standpoint, making welfare implications ambiguous. I analyze their impact on welfare in an empirical setting. This task requires structurally modeling the market by using data on hospitals, insurers, and consumers, and simulating counterfactual worlds free of vertical restraints.

I construct my dataset by combining data from multiple sources. Hospital characteristics come from the American …

Essays On The Economics Of Unhealthy Behaviors, Raul Segura-Escano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to explore a variety of responses in the form of unhealthy behaviors as a consequence of different sudden events perceived by individuals. The first one is the doubtlessly pure exogenous shock caused by an unexpected terrorist attack, Boston Marathon Bombings. The second one is the turmoil caused by the Great Recession of 2008, which is the most serious economic downturn since the Great Depression during the 1930’s. This dissertation consists of the following two chapters:

Chapter 1: “The Impact of Terrorism on Mental Health and Substance Use: Evidence from the Boston Marathon Bombings” On April 15, 2013, …

Race And Gun Violence In The United States: A Case Study Of Policy Reform In Missouri, Morgan C. Williams Jr

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gun violence remains an important contributor to racial differences in mortality within the United States. Despite the existence of these significant racial disparities in firearm homicide victimization, the relationship between gun control policy and racial disparities in homicide remains largely unexplored within the empirical crime literature. Previous research suggests that access to secondary firearm markets serves as a salient contributor to local gun violence with the regulation of private firearm sales falling exclusively within state-level jurisdiction. The role of state-level background check requirements for private firearm sales in reducing gun violence remains controversial in both the empirical literature and gun …

Essays On The Economics Of Health And Human Capital, Paloma Lopez De Mesa Moyano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores dynamics related to the formation of human capital. In the two chapters contained within, my work investigates how human capital is formed and maintained through either individual decisions or historic events. In particular, the first chapter analyzes the long-term health effects of a large-scale bombing campaign on the population of a developing country up to two generations after the event occurred; the second chapter analyzes how attending a public honors college in the U.S. affects the degree completion of students and their college quality choice. In these two different contexts, I approach the common topic of human …

Essays On The Economics Of Driving And Health, Jessica Lynn Peck

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation comprises three essays on the economics of driving and health. The first examines the effect of the ride-hailing service Uber, its launch in New York City in May 2011, and the resulting drunk-driving outcomes in the counties that received service compared with those that did not. The difference-in-differences estimation of this effect implies a 25 to 35 percent decrease in the alcohol-related collision rate for the affected New York City boroughs, or about 40 collisions per month. With differentiated treatment effects for each affected county, the difference-in-differences effect is higher for Manhattan, middling for the Bronx and Brooklyn, …