Latest News and Research
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Do Incentives Matter for Hospitals?
By Tal Gross, Adam Sacarny, Maggie Shi & David Silver
America spends about 6 cents of every dollar at its hospitals. A natural question to ask: why not just pay those hospitals less? Read More → -
How important is price variation between health insurers?
By Stuart V. Craig, Keith Marzilli Ericson, and Amanda Starc
We examined how prices vary between insurers for the same procedure at the same hospital, using a dataset of all commercial Massachusetts hospital claims. Read More → -
The role of TRIPS in encouraging pharmaceutical technological diffusion in developing countries
Iain Cockburn, Tim Wilsdon, Michele Pistollato, Rajini Jayasuriya, and Thomas Watson
The 1995 TRIPS Agreement between member states of the World Trade Organization (WTO) defines minimum standards of intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement. Read More → -
How big technology systems are slowing innovation
James Bessen's article “How big technology systems are slowing innovation: The great IT revolution is no longer promoting economic dynamism. It’s preventing it” in the MIT Technology Review February 17, 2022 Read More →
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Tech ads at the Super Bowl offered a shiny — or is it dark? — vision of the future
James Bessen quoted in The Washington Post, February 14, 2022. Read More →
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US Insurer Spending on Ivermectin Prescriptions for COVID-19
Insurers heavily subsidize the cost of ivermectin prescriptions for COVID, despite the lack of evidence that ivermectin is effective for COVID. In a new paper, published in JAMA, Questrom professor and TPRI co-lead Rena Conti with colleagues Kao-Ping Chua and Nora Becker (both University of Michigan) estimate that U.S. insurers may have wasted $2.5 million on these drugs in the week of August 13, 2021 alone. Read More →