Liran Einav
Biographic Data
| ID | 1455436 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Liran Einav |
| GIVEN NAMES | Liran |
| FAMILY NAME | Einav |
| SIGNATURE | EINAV L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3349-5356 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A blueprint for U.S. health insurance policy
There is no shortage of proposals for U.S. health insurance reform. In our recent book, We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Einav & Finkelstein, 2023), we offered one more. It grew out of our internal debates over healthcare reform, between two academic economists who work (often together) on U.S. health policy but have not yet been involved in making that policy. We started by trying to define the goal: what is the problem tha…
Response to Jason Furman
We are pleased that Jason Furman responded to our proposal by recommending that the book (on which we base the proposal) should be “required reading by specialists and non-specialists alike” and noting that he “would be perfectly happy if [our] proposal were adopted.” Both comments are extremely gratifying to receive from a skilled and insightful economist, and particularly from someone who was involved—at the highest levels of the Obama Administ…
Targeting Precision Medicine
Previous articleNext article No AccessTargeting Precision Medicine: Evidence from Prenatal ScreeningPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookxLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Just Accepted Article DOIhttps:/…
Long-Term Care Hospitals
There is substantial waste in U.S. healthcare but little consensus on how to combat it. We identify one source of waste: long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). Using the entry of LTCHs into hospital markets in an event study design, we find that most LTCH patients would have counterfactually received care at Skilled Nursing Facilities—facilities that provide medically similar care but are paid significantly less—and that substitution to LTCHs leaves p…
Why Is End-of-Life Spending So High? Evidence from Cancer Patients
We study the sources of high end-of-life spending for cancer patients. Even among patients with similar initial prognoses, spending in the year postdiagnosis is over twice as high for those who die within the year than those who survive. Elevated spending on decedents is predominantly driven by higher inpatient spending, particularly low-intensity admissions. However, most such admissions do not result in death, making it difficult to target spen…
Financial Incentives to Facilities and Clinicians Treating Patients With End-stage Kidney Disease and Use of Home Dialysis
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05005572
Can Health Insurance Competition Work? Evidence from Medicare Advantage
We estimate the economic surplus created by the Medicare Advantage program under its reformed competitive bidding rules. We use data on the universe of Medicare beneficiaries and develop a model of plan bidding that accounts for both market power and risk selection. We estimate that the Medicare Advantage program generates substantial surplus to participants (of $217 per enrollee-month), but that approximately two-thirds of this surplus is captur…
Prediction Accuracy With Electronic Medical Records Versus Administrative Claims
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the incremental predictive power of electronic medical record (EMR) data, relative to the information available in more easily accessible and standardized insurance claims data. DATA AND METHODS: Using both EMR and Claims data, we predicted outcomes for 118,510 patients with 144,966 hospitalizations in 8 hospitals, using widely used prediction models. We use cross-validation to prevent overfi…
Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets
Auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. We model the choice between auctions and posted prices as a trade-off between competitive price discovery and convenience. Evidence from eBay fits the theory. We then show that the decline in auctions was not driven by compositional shifts in seller experience or items sold, but by changing seller incentives. We estimate the deman…
Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Using data from employer-provided health insurance and Medicare Part D, we investigate whether healthcare utilization responds to the dynamic incentives created by the nonlinear nature of health insurance contracts. We exploit the fact that, because annual coverage usually resets every January, individuals who join a plan later in the year face the same initial ("spot") price of healthcare but a higher expected end-of-year ("future") price. We fi…
The Rand Health Insurance Experiment, Three Decades Later
Between 1974 and 1981, the RAND health insurance experiment provided health insurance to more than 5,800 individuals from about 2,000 households in six different locations across the United States, a sample designed to be representative of families with adults under the age of 62. More than three decades later, the RAND results are still widely held to be the "gold standard" of evidence for predicting the likely impact of health insurance reforms…
Jonathan Levin
Jonathan Levin, the 2011 recipient of the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal, has established himself as a leader in the fields of industrial organization and microeconomic theory. Jon has made important contributions in many areas: the economics of contracts and organizations; market design; markets with asymmetric information; and estimation methods for dynamic games. Jon's combination of breadth and depth is remarkable, ran…
Selection in Insurance Markets
Government intervention in insurance markets is ubiquitous and the theoretical basis for such intervention, based on classic work from the 1970s, has been the problem of adverse selection. Over the last decade, empirical work on selection in insurance markets has gained considerable momentum. This research finds that adverse selection exists in some insurance markets but not in others. And it has uncovered examples of markets that exhibit "advant…
Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas
We use individual-level survey and county-level expenditure data to examine the extent to which Hanukkah celebrations among US Jews are driven by the presence of Christmas. We document that Jews with young children are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah, that this effect is greater for reform Jews and for strongly-identified Jews, and that Jewish-related expenditure on Hanukkah is higher in counties with lower shares of Jews. All these findings ar…
Empirical Industrial Organization
The field of industrial organization has made dramatic advances over the last few decades in developing empirical methods for analyzing imperfect competition and the organization of markets. These new methods have diffused widely: into merger reviews and antitrust litigation, regulatory decision making, price setting by retailers, the design of auctions and marketplaces, and into neighboring fields in economics, marketing, and engineering. Increa…
What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success
In this paper, we focus on the effects of surname initials on professional outcomes in the academic labor market for economists. We begin our analysis with data on faculty in all top 35 U.S. economics departments. Faculty with earlier surname initials are significantly more likely to receive tenure at top ten economics departments, are significantly more likely to become fellows of the Econometric Society, and, to a lesser extent, are more likely…
The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Driving Behavior and Traffic Fatalities
This paper investigates the effects of mandatory seat belt laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. Using a unique panel data set on seat belt usage in all U.S. jurisdictions, we analyze how such laws, by influencing seat belt use, affect the incidence of traffic fatalities. Allowing for the endogeneity of seat belt usage, we find that such usage decreases overall traffic fatalities. The magnitude of this effect, however, is significantly …
The Rand Health Insurance Experiment, Three Decades Later
Between 1974 and 1981, the RAND health insurance experiment provided health insurance to more than 5,800 individuals from about 2,000 households in six different locations across the United States, a sample designed to be representative of families with adults under the age of 62. More than three decades later, the RAND results are still widely held to be the "gold standard" of evidence for predicting the likely impact of health insurance reforms…
What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success
In this paper, we focus on the effects of surname initials on professional outcomes in the academic labor market for economists. We begin our analysis with data on faculty in all top 35 U.S. economics departments. Faculty with earlier surname initials are significantly more likely to receive tenure at top ten economics departments, are significantly more likely to become fellows of the Econometric Society, and, to a lesser extent, are more likely…
Selection in Insurance Markets
Government intervention in insurance markets is ubiquitous and the theoretical basis for such intervention, based on classic work from the 1970s, has been the problem of adverse selection. Over the last decade, empirical work on selection in insurance markets has gained considerable momentum. This research finds that adverse selection exists in some insurance markets but not in others. And it has uncovered examples of markets that exhibit "advant…
Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas
We use individual-level survey and county-level expenditure data to examine the extent to which Hanukkah celebrations among US Jews are driven by the presence of Christmas. We document that Jews with young children are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah, that this effect is greater for reform Jews and for strongly-identified Jews, and that Jewish-related expenditure on Hanukkah is higher in counties with lower shares of Jews. All these findings ar…
Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets
Auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. We model the choice between auctions and posted prices as a trade-off between competitive price discovery and convenience. Evidence from eBay fits the theory. We then show that the decline in auctions was not driven by compositional shifts in seller experience or items sold, but by changing seller incentives. We estimate the deman…
Empirical Industrial Organization
The field of industrial organization has made dramatic advances over the last few decades in developing empirical methods for analyzing imperfect competition and the organization of markets. These new methods have diffused widely: into merger reviews and antitrust litigation, regulatory decision making, price setting by retailers, the design of auctions and marketplaces, and into neighboring fields in economics, marketing, and engineering. Increa…
Targeting Precision Medicine
Previous articleNext article No AccessTargeting Precision Medicine: Evidence from Prenatal ScreeningPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookxLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Just Accepted Article DOIhttps:/…
The Effects of Mandatory Seat Belt Laws on Driving Behavior and Traffic Fatalities
This paper investigates the effects of mandatory seat belt laws on driver behavior and traffic fatalities. Using a unique panel data set on seat belt usage in all U.S. jurisdictions, we analyze how such laws, by influencing seat belt use, affect the incidence of traffic fatalities. Allowing for the endogeneity of seat belt usage, we find that such usage decreases overall traffic fatalities. The magnitude of this effect, however, is significantly …
What's in a Surname? The Effects of Surname Initials on Academic Success
In this paper, we focus on the effects of surname initials on professional outcomes in the academic labor market for economists. We begin our analysis with data on faculty in all top 35 U.S. economics departments. Faculty with earlier surname initials are significantly more likely to receive tenure at top ten economics departments, are significantly more likely to become fellows of the Econometric Society, and, to a lesser extent, are more likely…
Is Hanukkah Responsive to Christmas
We use individual-level survey and county-level expenditure data to examine the extent to which Hanukkah celebrations among US Jews are driven by the presence of Christmas. We document that Jews with young children are more likely to celebrate Hanukkah, that this effect is greater for reform Jews and for strongly-identified Jews, and that Jewish-related expenditure on Hanukkah is higher in counties with lower shares of Jews. All these findings ar…
Empirical Industrial Organization
The field of industrial organization has made dramatic advances over the last few decades in developing empirical methods for analyzing imperfect competition and the organization of markets. These new methods have diffused widely: into merger reviews and antitrust litigation, regulatory decision making, price setting by retailers, the design of auctions and marketplaces, and into neighboring fields in economics, marketing, and engineering. Increa…
Selection in Insurance Markets
Government intervention in insurance markets is ubiquitous and the theoretical basis for such intervention, based on classic work from the 1970s, has been the problem of adverse selection. Over the last decade, empirical work on selection in insurance markets has gained considerable momentum. This research finds that adverse selection exists in some insurance markets but not in others. And it has uncovered examples of markets that exhibit "advant…
Jonathan Levin
Jonathan Levin, the 2011 recipient of the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal, has established himself as a leader in the fields of industrial organization and microeconomic theory. Jon has made important contributions in many areas: the economics of contracts and organizations; market design; markets with asymmetric information; and estimation methods for dynamic games. Jon's combination of breadth and depth is remarkable, ran…
The Rand Health Insurance Experiment, Three Decades Later
Between 1974 and 1981, the RAND health insurance experiment provided health insurance to more than 5,800 individuals from about 2,000 households in six different locations across the United States, a sample designed to be representative of families with adults under the age of 62. More than three decades later, the RAND results are still widely held to be the "gold standard" of evidence for predicting the likely impact of health insurance reforms…
Moral Hazard in Health Insurance
Using data from employer-provided health insurance and Medicare Part D, we investigate whether healthcare utilization responds to the dynamic incentives created by the nonlinear nature of health insurance contracts. We exploit the fact that, because annual coverage usually resets every January, individuals who join a plan later in the year face the same initial ("spot") price of healthcare but a higher expected end-of-year ("future") price. We fi…
Auctions versus Posted Prices in Online Markets
Auctions were very popular in the early days of internet commerce, but today online sellers mostly use posted prices. We model the choice between auctions and posted prices as a trade-off between competitive price discovery and convenience. Evidence from eBay fits the theory. We then show that the decline in auctions was not driven by compositional shifts in seller experience or items sold, but by changing seller incentives. We estimate the deman…
Prediction Accuracy With Electronic Medical Records Versus Administrative Claims
OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the incremental predictive power of electronic medical record (EMR) data, relative to the information available in more easily accessible and standardized insurance claims data. DATA AND METHODS: Using both EMR and Claims data, we predicted outcomes for 118,510 patients with 144,966 hospitalizations in 8 hospitals, using widely used prediction models. We use cross-validation to prevent overfi…
Can Health Insurance Competition Work? Evidence from Medicare Advantage
We estimate the economic surplus created by the Medicare Advantage program under its reformed competitive bidding rules. We use data on the universe of Medicare beneficiaries and develop a model of plan bidding that accounts for both market power and risk selection. We estimate that the Medicare Advantage program generates substantial surplus to participants (of $217 per enrollee-month), but that approximately two-thirds of this surplus is captur…
Financial Incentives to Facilities and Clinicians Treating Patients With End-stage Kidney Disease and Use of Home Dialysis
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05005572
Long-Term Care Hospitals
There is substantial waste in U.S. healthcare but little consensus on how to combat it. We identify one source of waste: long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). Using the entry of LTCHs into hospital markets in an event study design, we find that most LTCH patients would have counterfactually received care at Skilled Nursing Facilities—facilities that provide medically similar care but are paid significantly less—and that substitution to LTCHs leaves p…
Why Is End-of-Life Spending So High? Evidence from Cancer Patients
We study the sources of high end-of-life spending for cancer patients. Even among patients with similar initial prognoses, spending in the year postdiagnosis is over twice as high for those who die within the year than those who survive. Elevated spending on decedents is predominantly driven by higher inpatient spending, particularly low-intensity admissions. However, most such admissions do not result in death, making it difficult to target spen…
A blueprint for U.S. health insurance policy
There is no shortage of proposals for U.S. health insurance reform. In our recent book, We've Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Einav & Finkelstein, 2023), we offered one more. It grew out of our internal debates over healthcare reform, between two academic economists who work (often together) on U.S. health policy but have not yet been involved in making that policy. We started by trying to define the goal: what is the problem tha…
Response to Jason Furman
We are pleased that Jason Furman responded to our proposal by recommending that the book (on which we base the proposal) should be “required reading by specialists and non-specialists alike” and noting that he “would be perfectly happy if [our] proposal were adopted.” Both comments are extremely gratifying to receive from a skilled and insightful economist, and particularly from someone who was involved—at the highest levels of the Obama Administ…
Targeting Precision Medicine
Previous articleNext article No AccessTargeting Precision Medicine: Evidence from Prenatal ScreeningPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPeter Conner, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Petra PerssonPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookxLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Political Economy Just Accepted Article DOIhttps:/…
Economics (11 works) · Healthcare Policy and Management (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · Health care (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Health Systems, Economic Evaluations, Quality of Life (5 works) · Medicine (5 works) · Microeconomics (5 works)