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Health Behavior, Health Knowledge, and Schooling

Journal of Political Economy 1991 99(2), 287-305
The positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented. One explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life-styles by improving their knowledge of the relationships between health behaviors and health outcomes. That is, schooling improves the household's allocative efficiency in producing health. This empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation. Part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge. However, most of schooling's effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for.

A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influences on Price

Journal of Political Economy 1991 99(5), 1109-1116
This note tries to explain why many successful restaurants, plays, sporting events, and other activities do not raise prices even with persistent excess demand. My approach assumes that demand by a typical consumer is positively related to quantities demanded by other consumers. This can explain not only the puzzle about prices but also why consumer demand is often fickle, why it is much easier to go from being "in" to being "out" than from "out" to "in," and why supply does not increase to reduce the excess demand.

A Note on Restaurant Pricing and Other Examples of Social Influences on Price

Journal of Political Economy 1991 99(5), 1109-1116
This note tries to explain why many successful restaurants, plays, sporting events, and other activities do not raise prices even with persistent excess demand. The authors approach assumes that demand by a typical consumer is positively related to quantities demanded by other consumers. This can explain not only the puzzle about prices, but also why consumer demand is often fickle, why it is much easier to go from being "in" to being "out" than from "out" to "in," and why supply does not increase to reduce the excess demand.

Health Behavior, Health Knowledge, and Schooling

Journal of Political Economy 1991 99(2), 287-305
The positive correlation between schooling and good health is well documented. One explanation is that schooling helps people choose healthier life-styles by improving their knowledge of the relationship between health behaviors and health outcomes. That is, schooling improves the household's allocative efficiency in producing health. This empirical study uses direct measures of health knowledge to test this explanation. Part of the relationship between schooling and the consumption of cigarettes, alcohol, and exercise is explained by differences in health knowledge. However, most of schooling's effects on health behavior remain after differences in knowledge are controlled for.

Innovation, Imitation, and Economic Growth

Journal of Political Economy 1991 99(4), 807-827
This paper develops a dynamic general equilibrium model of economic growth. The model has a steady-state equilibrium in which some firms devote resources to discovering qualitatively improved products and other firms devote resources to copying these products. Rates of both innovation and imitation are endogenously determined on the basis of the outcomes of $R & D$ races between firms. Innovation subsidies are shown to unambiguously promote economic growth. Welfare is enhanced, however, only if the steady-state intensity of innovative effort exceeds a critical level.

The Safety Regulation of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants: Violations, Inspections, and Abnormal Occurrences

Journal of Political Economy 1989 97(1), 115-154
Data from more than 1,000 inspections to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission form the basis for an investigation into the nature of safety regulation at U.S.commercial nuclear reactors. Poisson (and binary choice) models of the rate of occurrence of violations during each inspection period are specified and are extended to control for nondetection and for the possibility that violations persist from one inspection to the next. These models are used to study the factors associated with noncompliance, relative rankings of plants according to propensity to violate, the variation in detection rates among NRC inspectors, and the relationship between undetected violations and abnormal occurrences.

The Safety Regulation of U.S. Nuclear Power Plants: Violations, Inspections, and Abnormal Occurrences

Journal of Political Economy 1989 97(1), 115-154
Data from more than 1,000 inspections to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission form the basis for an investigation into the nature of safety regulation at U.S.commercial nuclear reactors. Poisson (and binary choice) models of the rate of occurrence of violations during each inspection period are specified and are extended to control for nondetection and for the possibility that violations persist from one inspection to the next. These models are used to study the factors associated with noncompliance, relative rankings of plants according to propensity to violate, the variation in detection rates among NRC inspectors, and the relationship between undetected violations and abnormal occurrences.

Should Social Security Benefits Be Means Tested?

Journal of Political Economy 1987 95(3), 468-484
Social-security retirement benefits distort the saving decisions of workers who are rational enough to save for their future. Since the implicit rate of return in an unfunded social-security program is less than the marginal product of capital, the resulting decline in saving causes a welfare loss. The present paper examines the conditions under which the welfare loss can be reduced by replacing the current universal social-security program with a means-tested program that pays benefits only to those individuals with little or no other retirement income or assets.