Background: Although there is broad policy consensus that both cost containment and
quality improvement are critical, the association between costs and quality is poorly …

Background Major variations in medical practice have been documented internationally.
Variations raise questions about the quality, equity, and efficiency of resource allocation and …

Cesarean delivery is the most commonly performed surgical procedure in the United States,
and cesarean rates are increasing. Working with 2009 data from 593 US hospitals …

Season of birth is associated with later outcomes; what drives this association remains
unclear. We consider a new explanation: variation in maternal characteristics. We document …

Over the last few decades behavioral economics has revolutionized the discipline. It has
done so by putting the human back into economics, by recognizing that people sometimes …

There are widespread differences in health care spending and utilization across regions of
the US as well as in other countries. Are these variations caused by demand-side factors …

Abstract In the United States, health care technology has contributed to rising survival rates,
yet health care spending relative to GDP has also grown more rapidly than in any other …

A large literature in medicine documents variation across areas in the use of surgical
treatments that is unrelated to outcomes. Observers of this phenomenon have invoked “flat …

This paper provides new evidence on the interaction between patient information and
physician financial incentives. Using rich microdata on childbirth, we compare the treatment …

In this paper, we explore the role patient incentives play in slowing healthcare spending
growth. Evidence suggests that while patients do indeed respond to financial incentives …