Our Work

Policy makers and insurers promote the use of generic drugs because they can deliver large savings without sacrificing quality. But these efforts meet resistance from the public, who perceive generic drugs as inferior substitutes for brand name counterparts. Building on literature showing that negative emotions reduce risk-taking, the authors hypothesize that receiving bad medical news (i.e., negative information about one’s health) prompts patients to favor brand name over generic drugs as means to safeguard their health. The evidence exploits low-density lipoprotein cholesterol test results, where a discontinuity from clinical guidelines enables the authors to estimate the causal effect of bad medical news.

Despite growth in private equity (PE) acquisitions of physician practices in the US, little is known about how changes in ownership influence workforce composition. Using clinician-level data linked to practice acquisition information, we estimated changes in clinician workforce composition in PE-acquired practice sites relative to non-PE-acquired independent practice sites for dermatology, ophthalmology, and gastroenterology specialties.

It’s clear that changes in telehealth policy, mobile technology development, and consumer demand have fundamentally reshaped mental health treatment and substance use care in the US and around the world. What does this mean for people’s outcomes, specifically behavioral health care access, quality, and cost?