Contemporary Economic Policy最新文献

The observation of increasing healthcare bills with health IT adoption could arise in two fashions: the bill-inflation and complete-coding mechanisms. Prior studies using claims data may not distinguish between them, as both lead to similar patterns in claims data. Using data from the Medicare Recovery Audit Program, which reviews Medicare Parts A and B fee-for-service claims, we examine how the overpayments/underpayment rate for hospitalization changes as hospitals adopt electronic medical records (EMRs). Our finding of little correlation between EMRs and overpayments but lower underpayments in EMR hospitals suggests EMRs improve coding and documentation. The results have potentially important policy implications.

We explore the labor market effects of state-level scope of practice (SOP) reform for nurse practitioners that grants full practice authority (FPA) on the earnings and labor supply decisions of physicians and nurse practitioners. We employ a difference-in-differences research design using data from the American Community Survey between 2010 and 2019 to find that SOP laws granting FPA increase earnings of nurse practitioners and have some impacts on their labor supply. However, we find no effects on the earnings of physicians. To examine mechanisms, we use aggregated Medicare data from the Dartmouth Atlas to show no change on physician reimbursements.

Scope of practice is a phrase used to describe the types of services that can be performed by non-physician healthcare providers. In the United States, the range of services a practitioner may offer is not determined by representatives of the profession, but instead through a state-level legislative process. Researchers in this space have focused on understanding the effects of these state policies on the accessibility, quality, and cost-effectiveness of healthcare for patients. As the physician shortage grows, understanding areas where non-physician providers can bridge this care gap presents potential solutions to healthcare barriers. This introduction outlines the themes of the issue, what has been done in the literature, what is yet to be done, and the current conversation within state and federal legislatures.

When a US Supreme Court ruling allowed states to ban abortion, women of childbearing age in the states where abortion became illegal reported higher rates of anxiety symptoms compared to similar-aged women in other states and older women in the same states. This study highlights how people respond to major policy changes and underscores the importance of mental health as a measure of well-being for policymakers and researchers.

This article examines the impact of opacity in announcing the central bank's inflation target on macroeconomic volatility and welfare, considering the interaction between an independent central bank and a fiscal authority. Our findings suggest that a key factor influencing the effects of central bank transparency is the relative importance placed by the central bank, compared to the government, on output stabilization versus inflation stabilization. Specifically, when output stabilization is relatively more important for the central bank than for the government, full opacity may benefit the central bank, but not necessarily society as a whole.

We examine the impact of mental health on financial risk attitudes using panel data from Australia. In an instrumental-variables framework that tries to address the endogeneity of mental health, we find that poor mental health can lead to a higher willingness to take risks. Specifically, a standard deviation decrease in mental health leads to a 10.3 percentage point increase in the likelihood of taking financial risks. This finding remains robust across various sensitivity checks and highlights the significant role that mental health plays in risk-taking preferences in financial matters.