ESSAYS IN HEALTH ECONOMICS

Abstract

The dissertation comprises three chapters that use applied econometric techniques to answer policy-related questions, particularly those that have implications for behavioral health. In the first and second chapters, I study the unintended consequences of public policies on behavioral health outcomes. In the last chapter, I study local access to mental health care providers on juvenile arrests. In the first chapter, I study state-imposed payday lending bans on suicide, fatal drug overdoses, and fatal alcohol poisoning over the period 1999 to 2016. Payday lenders oer \quick cash" and charge high fees relative to the principle loan amounts. I combine the restricted-use National Center for Health Statistics Multiple Cause of Death Files coupled with state policy changes using two-way fixed effects regression. My estimates show that restricting access to payday loans reduces suicide rate by 2.1 percent and fatal drug overdoses rate by 8.9 percent. My findings suggest that restricting access to payday loans can reduce suicides and deaths linked to substance misuse. In the second chapter, I investigate the effect of recent legalization of recreational marijuana use (RMLs) on household spending on food and alcohol over the period 2005 to 2018. Utilizing expenditure as a proxy for consumption, I combine data from the Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey coupled with state policy changes using two-way fixed effects regression. I find, post legalization, quarterly household expenditure on total food spending is increased, driven mainly by spending on food consumed away from home. I also document an increase in spending on alcohol following the recreational marijuana legalization (RML). These findings suggest that food/alcohol and marijuana are complements. In the third chapter, my coauthors and I estimate the effect of local access to office-based mental healthcare on juvenile arrests. We leverage variation in the number of mental healthcare offices within a county over the period 1999 to 2016 in a two-way fixed effects model. We find that increasing the number of mental healthcare offices modestly reduces juvenile arrests for violent crimes. Given crime and incarceration impose substantial costs on society and interventions during early life can have more pronounced effects, our results imply increased access to mental health care treatment may have an unintended benefitt.