Myung-Ho Baek

We study the effect of damage caps adopted in the 1990s and 2000s on medical malpractice claim rates and payouts. Prior studies found some evidence that caps reduce payout per claim, but mixed and weak evidence on whether caps reduce paid claim rates and payout per physician. However, most prior studies do not allow for the gradual phase‐in of damage caps, which usually apply only to lawsuits filed after the reform's effective date, or only to injuries after the effective date. Once we allow for

Will tort reform “bend the cost curve?” Health‐care providers and tort reform advocates insist the answer is “yes.” They claim that defensive medicine is responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars in health‐care spending every year. If providers and reform advocates are right, once damages are capped and lawsuits are otherwise restricted, defensive medicine, and thus overall health‐care spending, will fall substantially. We study how Medicare spending changed after Texas adopted comprehensi

The U nited S tates has experienced three medical malpractice (med mal) crises in the past 40 years. In response, 31 states now have caps on noneconomic or total damages. Researchers have studied the impact of these caps, relative to control states without caps, but have not studied trends in no‐cap states or overall national trends. We find that the per‐physician rate of paid med mal claims has been dropping for 20 years and in 2012 was less than half the 1992 level. Lawsuit rates, in the state

Nine states adopted caps on non-economic damages during the third medical malpractice reform wave from 2002–05, joining twenty-two other states with caps on non-economic or total damages. We study the effects of these reforms on physician supply. Across a variety of difference-in-differences (DiD), triple differences, and synthetic control methods, in both state- and county-level regressions, we find, with tight confidence intervals, no evidence that cap adoption leads to an increase in total pa

The elderly account for a disproportionate share of medical spending, but little is known about how they are treated by the medical malpractice system, or how tort reform affects elderly claimants. We compare paid medical malpractice claims brought by elderly plaintiffs in Texas during 1988–2009 to those brought by adult non-elderly plaintiffs. Controlling for healthcare utilization (based on inpatient days), elderly paid claims rose from about 20% to about 40% of the adult non-elderly rate by t

이 연구는 고령화연구패널조사를 활용하여 2006~2018년의 기간 동안 나타나는 60~79세 고령층의 건강상태의 변화를 사회경제적 특성 변화와 사회경제적 특성의 영향 변화로 나누어 설명한다. 건강변수는 주관적 건강상태, 건강문제로 인한 활동 제한, 만성질환 보유 여부에 따라 다섯 가지 변수를 활용한다. 우선 건강상태의 변화와 교육수준 및 일자리 특성 등 사회경제적 요인의 변화를 살펴본 후 확률모형의 추정과 Blinder-Oaxaca 분해법을 활용하여 건강상태의 변화를 특성효과와 계수효과로 나누어 살펴본다. 분석 결과 이 기간 동안 고령층의 교육수준은 빠르게 향상되고, 상용직 근로자 등 경제활동에 참여하는 비율도 증가하는 것으로 나타난다. 또한 주관적 건강상태와 활동 제한 여부로 살펴본 고령층의 건강은 전반적으로 향상된 것으로 나타나며, 교육수준의 향상, 경제활동 참여 증가 등 고령층의 평균적인 사회경제적 특성의 변화가 건강상태 개선의 많은 부분을 설명하고, 계수효과는 거의 없는 것으

Gender differences in labor markets and within households have been investigated by researchers for a long time.This dissertation adds new findings to the body of gender-related empirical studies on labor markets and demographic decisions.The first essay deals with the firm size selection behavior of workers and the firms' employment patterns by size in the United States.Using the Current Population Survey, I find that the changes in firm size distribution show different trends by gender between