This paper evaluates policies rolled out during the COVID-19 pandemic aimed at stabilizing the economy and their effects on health outcomes. Using difference-in-difference models, we estimate the effects of three stimulus payments and reopening of the economy on mortality, emergency department visits, and inpatient stays of Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries. The results imply that the effects of stimulus payments on mortality and utilization exhibit considerable heterogeneity across different rounds and public health insurance programs. We find that the effects of stimulus payments were less pronounced for individuals with previous diagnosis of opioid use disorder suggesting that a positive income shock has no impact on drug consumption of the at risk population. The opening of the economy only positively affects the utilization of emergency department services.

In this paper, I analyze the effects of changes in day-to-day air pollution levels on daily absences for New York City schools from 2006 to 2019. I combine EPA air quality data with absences for more than 1600 schools. To alleviate endogeneity concerns I use wind as an instrument for transport of air pollution. I estimate that an additional 1 μg/m3 of PM2.5 pollution increases absences across all schools by 0.044 percentage points (pp), and an extra part-per-billion (PPB) of Ozone increases it by 0.029pp. PM2.5 pollution has the largest effects on elementary and middle schools, and on schools with more impoverished students. Examining trends across 14 years of pollution and absences, my results suggest that the decrease in average daily PM2.5 pollution of 5 μg/m3 from 2006 to 2019 led to at least 0.2pp fewer absences across NYC schools every day. In contrast, Ozone concentrations did not decline over time, and I find that Ozone affects high school absences more than it affects elementary or middle school absences. This work shows the improvements over time in air quality in New York City but also highlights the disparate impacts of air pollution.

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) seek to potentially reduce opioid misuse by restricting the sale of opioids in a state. We examine discontinuities along state borders, where one side may have a PDMP and the other side may not. We find that electronic PDMP implementation, whereby doctors and pharmacists can observe a patient’s opioid purchase history, reduces a state’s opioid sales but increases opioid sales in neighboring counties on the other side of the state border. We also find systematic differences in opioid sales and mortality between border counties and interior counties. These differences decrease when neighboring states both have ePDMPs, which is consistent with the hypothesis that individuals cross state lines to purchase opioids. Our work highlights the importance of understanding the opioid market as connected across counties or states, as we show that states are affected by the opioid policies of their neighbors.

The opioid epidemic began with prescription pain relievers. In 2010 Purdue Pharma reformulated OxyContin to make it more diffcult to abuse. OxyContin misuse fell dramatically, and concurrently heroin deaths began to rise. Previous research overlooked generic oxycodone and argued that the reformulation induced OxyContin users to switch directly to heroin. Using a novel and fine-grained source of all oxycodone sales from 2006-2014, we show that the reformulation led users to substitute from OxyContin to generic oxycodone, and the reformulation had no overall impact on opioid or heroin mortality. In fact, generic oxycodone, instead of OxyContin, was the driving factor in the transition to heroin. Finally, we show that by omitting generic oxycodone we recover the results of the literature. These findings highlight the important role generic oxycodone played in the opioid epidemic and the limited effectiveness of a partial supply-side intervention.