Author: Junhua YuPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160
Book Description
Three Essays on the Application of Nonlinear Regression Models in Health Economics
Author: Junhua YuThree Essays on Nonlinear Regression Models in Econometrics and Actuarial Science
Author: Linda Elin WalterThree Essays in Health Econometrics
Author: Juan DuThree Essays on Count Data Estimation Methods with Applications to Health Economics
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 110
Book Description
The purpose of this dissertation is to propose and estimate count data microeconometric models that take into account special features of health care data. Three problems in health economics are investigated. The first essay analyzes the effect of managed care insurance plans on the demand for outpatient physician visits. It provides a Bayesian method to empirically separate selection effects due to individual choice of coverage and incentive effects known as moral hazard. The proposed Endogenous Hurdle Poisson log-Normal model addresses two important econometric issues: the large proportion of zero outpatient visits and the endogeneity of managed care insurance status to utilization of outpatient services. The data are obtained from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, (MEPS), and the sample consists of privately insured individuals, aged 21-64, all of whom are employed but not self-employed. The analysis indicates both favorable selection bias and important moral hazard effects in the decision whether to utilize an outpatient visit or not. The second essay investigates the impact of health insurance coverage on utilization of doctor visits. A Bayesian panel count data model with correlated random effects and endogenous treatment of the insurance variable is applied to a subset of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a national longitudinal survey of individuals over 50 years old and their spouses. The age limit for Medicare eligibility at age 65 serves as an exclusion restriction. After controlling for selection effects insured individuals present higher utilization of doctor visits. The third essay analyzes the demand for cigarettes using data from the 1994-1996 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII). Since individuals tend to round their consumption of cigarettes in packs smoked per day the dependent variable - number of cigarettes - exhibits pile-ups of counts. The mixed binary-ordered probit approach accommodates this feature of the data and models the starting smoking, the quitting smoking and the how much to smoke decisions. The analysis is performed separately for men and women and provides strong evidence of gender differences in cigarette consumption.
Dissertation Abstracts International
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Dissertations, Academic
Languages : en
Pages : 564
Book Description
Three Essays in Health Economics
Author: Alfred Wai Ching KongPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Body mass index
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The first chapter of this thesis studies the relationship between obesity and school performance among children aged 16 to 17 years using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). OLS, quantile regression and IV estimates of obesity all indicate there is a negative relationship between obesity and school performance. Quantile regression estimates indicate being obese has a strong negative impact among children at the 75th percentile for the full sample. Being obese seems to have an impact on school performance among high achievers but not among lower achievers. In addition, IV estimate of obesity indicates a strong negative effect of obesity on academic performance. The second chapter studies the effect of retirement on various measures of health among Canadians using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). Both OLS regressions and a fuzzy regression discontinuity design are used to capture the effect of retirement on health. OLS estimates suggest retirement is associated with a more physically active and less stressful life among retirees in the full sample and the female subsample. On the other hand, 2SLS results from regression discontinuity design indicate retirement has a negative impact on mental health among retirees in the full sample. Retirement causes a decrease of 1.48 point (around 148% of one standard deviation) in the standardized mental health score, and the estimate is robust across different bandwidths. The third chapter uses a linear regression model to study peer effects on adolescent weight status using data from Add Health. OLS estimates suggest the adolescent's own BMI is positively related to average peers' BMI for the female subsample. Since OLS estimates would be inconsistent if omitted variable bias exists, the linear regression model is re-estimated under different degree of correlation between the main explanatory variable and unobservable factors. Estimates under those relative correlation restrictions suggest OLS estimates are quite robust when omitted variable bias exists. The sign of estimated peer effects would only change if the correlation between the main explanatory variable and unobservable factors is as much as three times the correlation between the main explanatory variable and other controls.
Light, Libation and the Parsing of Health
Author: Nathan W. TefftThree Essays in Health Economics
Author: Huilin ZhuPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This dissertation consists of three essays in health economics. The first chapter, "The Built Environment and Obesity in Philadelphia: The Use of Satellite Imagery and Transfer Learning," investigates the relationship between the built environment and health outcomes, specifically obesity prevalence in Philadelphia. The built environment can affect obesity prevalence through the physical activity environment and the food environment. The main innovation of this paper is to use a pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract data representing the features of the built environment from high-resolution satellite imagery. Because of the lack of information on the food environment in satellite images, I combined a proxy variable for food access together with the feature variables to represent the characteristics of the built environment. I then employed the Elastic Net model to test the relationship between the feature variables of the built environment and obesity prevalence in Philadelphia. The results show that the built environment is highly associated with obesity prevalence. This study also provides some evidence that the features of the built environment that have been extracted from satellite imagery can reduce the role of food access in estimating obesity, as well as that adding these features can explain more variance of obesity. The second chapter, "Paid Maternity Leave and Child Health: Evidence from Urban China," uses the China Health and Nutrition Survey data to study whether the extension of paid maternity leave affects children's health outcomes in urban China. This paper uses the time variation of the implementation of a maternity leave policy across different provinces from 1987 to 1991 in China to estimate a two-way fixed-effects model. The results suggest that the expansion of paid maternity leave has no impact on children's health in urban China. The last chapter, titled "The Association between Paid Maternity Leave and Mothers' Health and Labor Outcomes in Urban China," studies whether the extension of paid maternity leave in 1987-1991 would affect the labor and health outcomes of mothers in urban China by using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data. Based on the variation in the implementation time of a paid maternity leave policy across different provinces, this paper employs a two-way fixed-effects model to estimate the policy impact on mothers' health and labor outcomes in China. The findings indicate that extending the duration of paid maternity leave is associated with an increased likelihood of mothers remaining employed after childbirth. However, the study also reveals a negative relationship between the extension of paid maternity leave and mothers' wage rates.
Three Essays on Health Economics
Author: Keisha T. SolomonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 138
Book Description
My dissertation covers three loosely related topics in health and education economics that focus on examining factors that may affect children's and young adults' health capital and human capital accumulation. The first essay examines the effect of state-level full parity mental illness law implementation on mental illness among college-aged individuals and human capital accumulation in college. It is important to consider spill-overs to these educational outcomes, as previous research shows that mental illness impedes college performance. I utilize administrative data on completed suicides and grade point average, and survey data on reported mental illness days and decision to drop-out of college between 1998 and 2008 in differences-in-differences (DD) analysis to uncover causal effects of state-level parity laws. Following the passage of a state-level full parity law, I find that the suicide rate reduces, the propensity to report any poor mental health day reduces, college GPA increases, and the propensity to drop out of college does not change. The second essay investigates the effects of family size on child health. This essay is a joint study with Kabir Dasgupta. In this study, we use matched mother-child data from the National Longitudinal Surveys to study the effects of family size on child health. Focusing on excess body weight indicators as children's health outcome of interest, we examine the effects of exogenous variations in family size generated by twin births and parental preference for mixed sex composition of their children. We find no significant empirical support in favor of the quantity-quality trade-off theory in instrumental variable regression analysis. This result is further substantiated when we make use of the panel aspects of the data to study child health outcomes of arrival of younger siblings at later parities. The third essay estimates the causal effect of being born out of wedlock on a child's health outcome and early academic achievements. Specifically, the study uses rich panel data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the Children of the NLSY79 (NLSY79-child), coupled with a sibling fixed-effects model to address omitted variable bias attributable to unobserved family characteristics. The study findings suggest that the results from the OLS models have been driven by unobserved family effects, because the significance of the results disappear for the sibling fixed-effects models. Also, due to the large confidence intervals, and the signs changing for some of the regression coefficients, I cannot conclusively state whether being born to a married mother has no significant impact on children's health and education.
Three Essays on Health Econometrics
Author: Bidisha MandalPublisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
This dissertation incorporates several estimation procedures and modeling techniques to investigate important issues in health economics. All of the essays are tied to the application of econometrics in health related topics, but the techniques used in this research can be applied to many issues in agricultural, environmental and development economics.