Essays in health economics and equity
Description
In this dissertation, I present three essays broadly encompassed by the title Essays in Health Economics and Equity. The first fits squarely in the health economics literature, the second fits squarely in the discrimination literature, and the third spans both. The first essay is entitled, Can Targeted Informational Nudges Change Health Care Behaviors? In this essay, I take advantage of a natural experiment with a plausibly exogenous assignment between treatment and control group to assess whether targeted health information can change behavior. I find that this information alone appears to have increased the utilization of many but not all lower-intensity preventative services, but largely did not affect the utilization of costlier services. The second essay is entitled, Employment Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a Field Experiment. Along with my co-author, Patrick Button, I conducted a resume correspondence experiment to measure discrimination in hiring faced by Indigenous Peoples in the United States (Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians). This is the seventh largest study of this type from among 113 other resume-correspondence studies, and after numerous robustness checks, we almost never find any differences in callback rates by group, regardless of the context. Finally, the third essay is entitled, Association of Simulated Patient Race and Ethnicity with Scheduling of Primary Care Appointments. Along with my co-author, Janna M. Wisniewski, I conducted a phone audit field experiment to measure potential racial and ethnic discrimination faced by Black and Hispanic versus White women when scheduling a medical appointment. Among callers for whom insurance status was asked and revealed, Black and Hispanic callers were offered later appointment times despite having the same insurance status as their White counterparts. These results suggest that minorities face barriers to timely access to healthcare. Each essay is focused on using econometric techniques to identify and measure causal relationships, be it using prospective randomization to measure discrimination or a quasi-experimental method to measure patient responses. These relationships can then provide foundational understanding for policymakers and employers alike, as well as motivate further research in their respective fields.