Douglas Staiger
Biographic Data
| ID | 2569132 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Douglas Staiger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Douglas |
| FAMILY NAME | Staiger |
| SIGNATURE | STAIGER D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 8 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 13 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth in Health Care
We draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to explain empirical patterns of survival gains in heart attacks. Using Medicare data for 2.8 million patients during 1986-2004, we find that hospitals rapidly adopting cost-effective innovations such as beta blockers, aspirin, and reperfusion, had substantially better outcomes for their patients. Holding technology adoption constant, the marginal returns to spending were relatively mo…
Abortion and Selection
Abortion legalization in the early 1970s led to dramatic changes in fertility. Some research has suggested that it altered cohort outcomes, but this literature has been limited and controversial. In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding selection mechanisms and use that framework to both address inconsistent past methodological approaches and provide evidence on the long-run impact on cohort characteristics. Our results indicate th…
Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement
We used a random-assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects on student test scores. Having estimated teacher effects during a pre-experimental period, we used these estimates to predict student achievement following random assignment of teachers to classrooms. While all of the teacher effect estimates we considered were significant predictors of student …
Parental Preferences and School Competition
This paper uses school choice data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District to study parents' preferences for school characteristics and their implications for demand and competition in school choice. We estimate a mixed-logit demand model using the rankings of parents' top three school choices in the first year of school choice. Our results show that parents value proximity highly and preferences for school test scores increase with studen…
Mortality Among Very Low-Birthweight Infants in Hospitals Serving Minority Populations
Objective. We investigated whether the proportion of Black very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants treated by hospitals is associated with neonatal mortality for Black and White VLBW infants. Methods. We analyzed medical records linked to secondary data sources for 74050 Black and White VLBW infants (501 g to 1500 g) treated by 332 hospitals participating in the Vermont Oxford Network from 1995 to 2000. Hospitals where more than 35% of VLBW infants …
Hospital-Level Racial Disparities in Acute Myocardial Infarction Treatment and Outcomes
BACKGROUND: Previous studies have documented racial disparities in treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) among Medicare beneficiaries. However, the extent to which unobserved differences between hospitals explains some of these differences is unknown. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine whether the observed racial treatment disparities for AMI narrow when analyses account for differences in where blacks and whites are…
Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments
This paper develops asymptotic distribution theory for instrumental variable regression when the partial correlation between the instruments and a single included endogenous variable is weak, here modeled as local to zero. Asymptotic representations are provided for various instrumental variable statistics, including the two-stage least squares (TSLS) and limited information maximum- likelihood (LIML) estimators and their t-statistics. The asympt…
The Nairu, Unemployment and Monetary Policy
This paper examines the precision of conventional estimates of the NAIRU and the role of the NAIRU and unemployment in forecasting inflation. The authors find that, although there is a clear empirical Phillips relation, the NAIRU is imprecisely estimated, forecasts of inflation are insensitive to the NAIRU, and there are other leading indicators of inflation that are at least as good as unemployment. This suggests deemphasizing the NAIRU in publi…
The Nairu, Unemployment and Monetary Policy
This paper examines the precision of conventional estimates of the NAIRU and the role of the NAIRU and unemployment in forecasting inflation. The authors find that, although there is a clear empirical Phillips relation, the NAIRU is imprecisely estimated, forecasts of inflation are insensitive to the NAIRU, and there are other leading indicators of inflation that are at least as good as unemployment. This suggests deemphasizing the NAIRU in publi…
Mortality Among Very Low-Birthweight Infants in Hospitals Serving Minority Populations
Objective. We investigated whether the proportion of Black very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants treated by hospitals is associated with neonatal mortality for Black and White VLBW infants. Methods. We analyzed medical records linked to secondary data sources for 74050 Black and White VLBW infants (501 g to 1500 g) treated by 332 hospitals participating in the Vermont Oxford Network from 1995 to 2000. Hospitals where more than 35% of VLBW infants …
Instrumental Variables Regression with Weak Instruments
This paper develops asymptotic distribution theory for instrumental variable regression when the partial correlation between the instruments and a single included endogenous variable is weak, here modeled as local to zero. Asymptotic representations are provided for various instrumental variable statistics, including the two-stage least squares (TSLS) and limited information maximum- likelihood (LIML) estimators and their t-statistics. The asympt…
The Nairu, Unemployment and Monetary Policy
This paper examines the precision of conventional estimates of the NAIRU and the role of the NAIRU and unemployment in forecasting inflation. The authors find that, although there is a clear empirical Phillips relation, the NAIRU is imprecisely estimated, forecasts of inflation are insensitive to the NAIRU, and there are other leading indicators of inflation that are at least as good as unemployment. This suggests deemphasizing the NAIRU in publi…
Parental Preferences and School Competition
This paper uses school choice data from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District to study parents' preferences for school characteristics and their implications for demand and competition in school choice. We estimate a mixed-logit demand model using the rankings of parents' top three school choices in the first year of school choice. Our results show that parents value proximity highly and preferences for school test scores increase with studen…
Mortality Among Very Low-Birthweight Infants in Hospitals Serving Minority Populations
Objective. We investigated whether the proportion of Black very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants treated by hospitals is associated with neonatal mortality for Black and White VLBW infants. Methods. We analyzed medical records linked to secondary data sources for 74050 Black and White VLBW infants (501 g to 1500 g) treated by 332 hospitals participating in the Vermont Oxford Network from 1995 to 2000. Hospitals where more than 35% of VLBW infants …
Hospital-Level Racial Disparities in Acute Myocardial Infarction Treatment and Outcomes
BACKGROUND: Previous studies have documented racial disparities in treatment of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) among Medicare beneficiaries. However, the extent to which unobserved differences between hospitals explains some of these differences is unknown. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to determine whether the observed racial treatment disparities for AMI narrow when analyses account for differences in where blacks and whites are…
Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement
We used a random-assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects on student test scores. Having estimated teacher effects during a pre-experimental period, we used these estimates to predict student achievement following random assignment of teachers to classrooms. While all of the teacher effect estimates we considered were significant predictors of student …
Abortion and Selection
Abortion legalization in the early 1970s led to dramatic changes in fertility. Some research has suggested that it altered cohort outcomes, but this literature has been limited and controversial. In this paper, we provide a framework for understanding selection mechanisms and use that framework to both address inconsistent past methodological approaches and provide evidence on the long-run impact on cohort characteristics. Our results indicate th…
Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth in Health Care
We draw on macroeconomic models of diffusion and productivity to explain empirical patterns of survival gains in heart attacks. Using Medicare data for 2.8 million patients during 1986-2004, we find that hospitals rapidly adopting cost-effective innovations such as beta blockers, aspirin, and reperfusion, had substantially better outcomes for their patients. Holding technology adoption constant, the marginal returns to spending were relatively mo…
Economics (5 works) · Medicine (4 works) · Demographic economics (3 works) · Econometrics (3 works) · Internal Medicine (3 works) · Internal Medicine (3 works) · Biology (2 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Demography (2 works) · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth (2 works)