Working Papers
Provider Market Power and Adverse Selection in Health Insurance Markets: Evidence from the California Health Benefits Exchange (with Nicholas Tilipman). Draft available, upon request.
Selected Publications
The Effects of Medical Debt Relief: Evidence from Two Randomized Experiments (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong). The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 140(2): May 2025, 1187–1241. NBER Working Paper version (WP#32315, April 2024). Pre-registrations: J-PAL Summary. AEA Pre-registration 1 (Collector Debt). AEA Pre-registration 2 (Hospital Debt). Media coverage: New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, St. Louis Public Radio, Bloomberg, Vox, The Atlantic, Vox Today, Explained (Podcast), Tradeoffs (Podcast)
The Impact of Financial Assistance Programs on Health Care Utilization (with Alyce Adams, Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney, Jinglin Wang, and Francis Wong). American Economic Review: Insights. 4(3), September 2022: 389-407. Online Appendix.
Personalized Telephone Outreach Increased Health Insurance Take-Up for Hard-to Reach Populations (w/ Rebecca Myerson, Nicholas Tilipman, Andrew Fehrer, Honglin Li, and Isaac Menashe) Health Affairs. 41(1): 129–137, January 2022.
Trends in Medical Debt During the COVID Pandemic (with Raymond Kluender, Benedict Guttman-Kenney, Neale Mahoney, Francis Wong, and Xuyang Xia) JAMA Health Forum 3(5):e221031, May 2022.
The Role of Behavioral Frictions in Health Insurance Marketplace Enrollment and Risk: Evidence from a Field Experiment. (with Richard Domurat and Isaac Menashe) American Economic Review 111(5): 1549–1574 , May 2021. [Online Appendix] Media Coverage: Tradeoffs Podcast
Medical Debt in the United States, 2009-2020 (with Ray Kluender, Neale Mahoney and Francis Wong) Journal of the American Medical Association 326(3), July 2021. Media Coverage: NY Times, Washington Post, Vox, Marketwatch, CBS Evening News, Marketplace. JAMA editorial.
The Market for High-Quality Medicine: Retail Chain Entry and Drug Quality in India. 2019. (with Daniel Bennett) Review of Economics and Statistics 101(1) p.76-90 [Appendix]
Insurers’ Negotiating Leverage and the External Effect of Medicare Part D. 2015. (with Darius Lakdawalla), Review of Economics and Statistics 97:2 p.314-331 (an earlier version appears as NBER working paper no. 16251). Media coverage: New Yorker
Value of Survival Gains in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (with John Penrod, J. Ross Maclean, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) American Journal of Managed Care 2012 Nov;18(11 Suppl):S257-64
R&D Policy, Agency Costs and Innovation in Personalized Medicine. 2009. Journal of Health Economics 28(5): 950-962.
Market Incentives and Pharmaceutical Innovation. 2008. Journal of Health Economics 27(4):1060-1077.
Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2010. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) World Development 38(3): 333-344.
The Effect of the Medicare Part D Prescription Benefit on Drug Utilization and Expenditures (with Anirban Basu, James Zhang, Atonu Rabbani, David Meltzer, and Caleb Alexander) Lead article at Annals of Internal Medicine 148(3): 169-177. Annals’ Summary for Patients.
Designing Targeting Schemes with Poverty Maps: Does Disaggregation Help?. 2007. (with Berk Özler, Chris Elbers, Tomoki Fujii, Peter Lanjouw) Journal of Development Economics 83(1).
Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence from a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines. 2006. (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan) Quarterly Journal of Economics 121(2). Winner of TIAA-CREF 2006 Certificate of Excellence.
Deposit Collectors (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan). 2006. Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy 6(2), Article 5.
Other Publications and Policy Articles
Options To Improve Affordability In California’s Individual Health Insurance Market, (with Peter Lee, Katie Ravel and Nicholas Tilipman), a Covered California report for Gov. Newsom, California State Senate and State Assembly pursuant to AB1810, February, 2019
How retail drug markets in poor countries develop (with Dan Bennett) VoxDev.org, August, 13th, 2018.
Potential Impacts of Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson on Californians and the Individual Health Insurance Market (with John Bertko) Covered California Report, September 25, 2017
Evaluating the Potential Consequences of Terminating Direct Federal Cost-Sharing Reduction (CSR) Funding (with Richard Domurat) Covered California Report, January 26, 2017 [Appendix]
Trump’s “populist” economic proposals come with massive catches. Here’s what to watch for. Vox, November 18, 2016
Strengthening Risk Protection through Private Long-Term Care Insurance. Brookings Institution, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper 2015-06, June 2015. Policy Brief.
The impact of Medicare Part D on Medicare-Medicaid Dual-eligible Beneficiaries’ Prescription Utilization and Expenditures (with Caleb Alexander and Anirban Basu), Health Services Research, February 2010, 45(1), pp. 133-151
Valuing health technologies at NICE: Recommendations for Improved Incorporation of Treatment Value in HTA (with Dana Goldman, Darius Lakdawalla and Tomas Philipson) Health Economics October 2010, 10(11) pp. 1109-1116
Solutions and Challenges to Curing Global Health Inequality Innovations 2(4), October 2007, 2(4), pp. 72-80
Testing Savings Product Innovations Using an Experimental Methodology (with Nava Ashraf and Dean Karlan), Asian Development Bank, Economics and Research Department Technical Paper No. 8. November, 2003
A Review of Commitment Savings Products in Developing Countries (with Nava Ashraf, Nathalie Gons, Dean Karlan) ERD Working Paper, July 2003.
