Alice Chen

When does weight matter most

Past empirical work establishes a wage penalty from being overweight. In this paper, I exploit variation in an individuals weight over time to determine the age when weight has the largest impact on labor market outcomes. For white men, controlling for weight at younger ages does not eliminate the effect of older adult weight on wage: being overweight as a young adult only adds an additional penalty to adult wages. However, for white women, what they weigh in their early twenties solely determines the existence of an adult wage penalty. The female early-twenties weight penalty has a persistent effect on wages, and differences in marital characteristics, occupation status, or education cannot explain it. It also is not a proxy for intergenerational unobservables.

Productivity Benefits of Medical Care: Evidence from US-Based Randomized Clinical Trials

BACKGROUNDnOne of the key recommendations of the Second Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine is to take a societal perspective when evaluating new technologies-including measuring the productivity benefits of new treatments. Yet relatively little is known about the impact that new treatments have on labor productivity.nnnOBJECTIVESnTo examine the relationship between new drug treatments and gains in labor productivity across conditions in the United States and to evaluate which randomized clinical trials (RCTs) collected labor productivity data.nnnMETHODSnWe collected data on US-based RCTs with work-ability surveys from searches of Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, the Cochrane Central Registry of Clinical Trials, and ClinicalTrails.gov. Combining RCT data with survey data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we assessed productivity changes from new drug treatments.nnnRESULTSnDuring the last decade, some disease conditions have seen treatments that improve ability to work by as much as 60%. The annual increase in productivity gains attributable to new drug treatments was modest 1.1% (Pxa0=xa00.53). Of the 5092 RCTs reviewed, ability-to-work measures were collected in 2% of trials. Work productivity surveys were more likely among prevalent medical conditions that affected individuals who worked, earned higher wages, and experienced larger reductions in hours worked as a consequence of disease diagnosis.nnnCONCLUSIONSnFrom our data, we estimated that drug innovation increased productivity by 4.8 million work days per year and

Supply-side effects from public insurance expansions: Evidence from physician labor markets

221 billion in wages per year. These labor-sector benefits should be taken into account when assessing the socially optimal cost for new drug innovation.

Graduating into a downturn: Are physicians recession proof?

Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Programs (CHIP) are key sources of coverage for U.S. children. Established in 1997, CHIP allocated

Why Is Infant Mortality Higher in the United States Than in Europe

40 billion of federal funds across the first 10xa0years but continued support required reauthorization. After 2 failed attempts in Congress, CHIP was finally reauthorized and significantly expanded in 2009. Although much is known about the demand-side policy effects, much less is understood about the policys impact on providers. In this paper, we leverage a unique physician dataset to examine if and how pediatricians responded to the expansion of the public insurance program. We find that newly trained pediatricians are 8 percentage points more likely to subspecialize and as much as 17 percentage points more likely to enter private practice after the law passed. There is also suggestive evidence of greater private practice growth in more rural locations. The sharp supply-side changes that we observe indicate that expanding public insurance can have important spillover effects on provider training and practice choices.

Why is Infant Mortality Higher in the Us than in Europe

An extensive literature documents immediate and persistent adverse labor market outcomes for individuals graduating into an economic downturn, but these effects are heterogeneous across sectors, occupations, and skill levels. In particular, the impact of recessions on the labor market outcomes for new physician graduates remains unknown. We leverage a unique dataset on New York physicians to analyze if and how the Great Recession impacted the labor market of physicians who have completed their residency and fellowship training and are seeking their first job. We find that these physicians do not delay labor market entry and their job searches and other employment outcomes are unaffected by the business cycle. The collage of evidence demonstrates that new graduates were largely unfazed by the recent downturn, which sharply contrasts with other highly educated, high remunerating occupations.