UC San Diego

This dissertation looks at the interaction of the legal environment with health and labor market outcomes in a variety of settings. The first chapter examines the effect of state public health insurance expansion decisions on private insurance costs by comparing how private insurance plan costs have evolved over time according to whether a state has pursued a Medicaid coverage expansion as part of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act. The second chapter explores how one can test for judicial ingroup biases and applies the test to workplace sex discrimination cases. The third chapter evaluates the potential efficacy of federal incentive payments designed to boost physician access to electronic health records on patient outcomes in an Emergency Department setting