Outlook for Obamacare. No relationship between pharma spending and life expectancy. Too much and too little coverage. Effect of Dodd-Frank on farmers. Inflicting pain. Hospital Blackout. My favorite football player opens a yogurt shop.

You’re a researcher.  You just came up with a new medical treatment that is far superior to the previous treatment.  How do you get physicians to adopt your method/technology? Most researchers believe that providing the physician with evidence of the new treatment superiority is the number one factor driving adoption.  In a presentation at this [...]

“All tobacco companies are state-owned, and the industry provides signifiant revenue; it also directly employs more than half a million people. From the government’s perspective, smoking is important to stability, both economic and social.  Some cigarettes are even subsidized–the cheapest brands cost as little as thirty cents a pack, because officials fear that farmers will [...]

With the recent devastation in Haiti, many celebrities have advocated donating money to the non-profit Partners in Health.  What is this organization?  Is it the best place to donate your money? Almost 4 years ago, the Healthcare Economist endorsed PIH as a great place to donate your money in my post “Are you ready to [...]

The book Cadillac Desert discusses the development of dams, aquaducts, and irrigation canals to slake the thirst of cities and farmers in the Western U.S..  While these projects did eventually deliver the water they promised, they did so at huge costs to taxpayers.  In the words of former congressmen Robert W. Edgar: “The old-boy network [...]

Daily Kos has an interesting post on what should be the threshold to close a school. A second American died from the swine flu. Hong Kong hotel quarantine. Will the swine flu become drug resistant? Although pork is safe to eat, many people still fear eating products made from pigs.  Hog farmers may face significant losses [...]

Forbes reports that “California is perpetually portrayed as suffering from a shortage of water. Case in point: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently declared a statewide drought, telling citizens to prepare for rationing.”  As any economist would tell you, the solution to the water shortage problem is simple: raise the price of water. The largest culprits of [...]

Paul Polak’s book Out of Poverty could have just as easily been titled “How to get rich: a guide for small-time farmers in developing countries” or “Marketing to dollar-a-day earners.” Polak’s book states that donations –especially those run through the developing country government–will not end poverty. They have not so far. One reason is that [...]

Development economists have long sought the answers as to why new innovations do or do not get implemented in developing countries. Giliches (1957) found that hybrid corn adoption has an S-shaped function over time. Other studies have found that an individual’s social network is the primary determinant of technology adoption. If your friends try out [...]

The N.Y. Times ran an interesting pair of articles Sunday regarding how economists “got it wrong.” Conflict of Interest Ben Stein (in “The Long and Short of It at Goldman Sachs“) comments on the economic analysis conducted by economist Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs. Dr. Hatzuis concludes that the sub-prime mortgage ‘crisis’ will not only [...]