Contemporary Economic Policy最新文献

We use rich administrative data to study employment and income during a period of minimum wage growth in Washington State for a group of workers who may be particularly sensitive to changes in the minimum wage: college students. Using a within-student estimator and quarterly work records, we consistently find that rising minimum wages are associated with reduced summer employment, the quarter in which students tend to work the most. Students experiencing the largest reductions in employment are those with little or no work experience and non-local students. This is partially mitigated by students working more during the academic year.

We examine how disaster events influence small business activity in a sample of 48 U.S. states for the period from 1998 to 2018. Our results show that disaster impacts vary by entrepreneurship type; the rate of new entrepreneurs and start-up job creation rise in the aftermath of natural disasters, whereas the opportunity share of new entrepreneurs and start-up survival fall. These findings present a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between natural disasters and entrepreneurial activity than reported in the relevant literature. We interpret our findings in the context of economic dynamism and discuss policy implications.

A growing literature has examined how mandatory access prescription drug monitoring programs (MA PDMPs), laws that require providers to consider a patient's prescription history before prescribing controlled substances, affect opioid-related outcomes. However, evidence of their impact on non-opioid-related prescribing is mixed. This paper investigates the effect of MA PDMPs on prescribing patterns of stimulants and benzodiazepines. Using updated difference-in-differences methodology, we show that MA PDMPs led to decreases in stimulant prescribing but had no significant effects on benzodiazepine prescribing. Our findings highlight that MA PDMPs do have effects on non-opioid drug prescribing, but these effects differ substantially across drug types.

This paper studies the impacts of withdrawing from and failing an online course, relative to successful completion, on persistence for community college students. We leverage random assignment of students to instructors for identification. Withdrawing reduces the probability of persistence by about 20 percentage points, while the impact of failing is smaller and statistically indistinguishable from zero. Course withdrawals are highly correlated with institutional withdrawal, which is then linked to lower likelihood of returning the following semester. Our findings reinforce the importance of academic momentum: remaining in a course keeps students attached to college even if they earn a failing grade.

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.

Over 20,000 youth age out of foster care each year in the United States facing various hardships. Research demonstrates that extended foster care beneficially impacts youth aging out of care; however, it is less clear which states assist these youth. This descriptive paper explores which states effectively assist foster youth aging out of care. I use the National Youth in Transition Database and a two-step regression-adjusted approach to determine state effectiveness across a variety of outcomes, including college enrollment, employment, disconnectedness, homelessness, incarceration, substance abuse, and parenthood. I find considerable variation in state effectiveness depending on the outcome.

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.