The past weeks events in Chicago are instructive of America's gun problems.

We're all aware of the horror in Highland Park.

But just as many people were killed in Chicago last weekend as part of the every day shooting events plaguing urban America (1/5)

washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07… The murder rates for 18-24 black males in America remain shockingly high.

It simply dwarfs white males (pay attention to the scales of the two graphs).

It receives far less attention in the media than larger mass shooting events -- but the cumulative impact is far greater (2/5)

An important new paper on the relationship between prices and quality in hospitals.

High priced hospitals are a source of policy consternation -- with supporting regulation based on claim that prices and quality are "unrelated."

These claims rarely have empirical support. (1/6)

https://twitter.com/zackcooperYale/status/1498285619906330626

As @zackcooperYale highlights, @AmandaStarc1, Chris Ody and I started to address this question in our NBER paper.

We showed that hospitals compete for privately insured patients by making *costly* investments across a number of quality dimensions (2/6)

https://twitter.com/zackcooperYale/status/1498285645596352517

This @nytimes article on hospital pricing is a surprisingly simplistic take on bargaining in these markets.

For example, economists do think about insurer size … but it’s not the only factor that matters.

Can you credibly threaten to walk away? If not — enjoy high prices (1/3) This graphic seems to be presented as evidence of a problem in the market … is it?

People signing up for the PPO instead of the HMO have a preference for choice of lots of facilities — turns out you might have a different optimal price if the hospital must be in network (2/3)

Apparently, posting a picture of a grill with a large fire leads people to have a lot of questions.

Pull up a chair and let’s talk about the joys and deliciousness of wood fired grilling (1/6) Some basics.

This is a parilla — it’s a staple of Argentinian cooking.

You’re not cooking over flames — you are burning wood to make a bed of embers to cook over. Goal is to not let flames touch meat.

The area on right lets you continually burn wood to replenish embers (2/6)

Modern college athletics rests on a set of regressive transfers.

The pandemic is revealing this corrupt bargain by forcing shools to cancel money losing sports, slow new building, and reduce salaries.

We demonstrate these dynamics in a new paper (1/6)

nber.org/papers/w27734.… The first important fact: there are two business models in Division 1 college sports: "The Power 5" conferences and everyone else.

Power 5 athletic departments earn high revenues and take little direct support from main school.

It's a business, let's analyze it like one (2/6)

The government funding of the @moderna_tx vaccine provides an interesting discussion of the interaction between government and private industry in pharmaceuticals.

Traditionally, the purpose of NIH et al. is to to fund early stage research that otherwise wouldn't happen (1/5) This early stage research wouldn't occur because it is much harder to protect and firms are worried others will capture value created by their investment.

For this reason we don't uondition use of such research on pricing constraints because we want to maximize its use (2/5)

There has been a lot of focus on whether pharmaceutical firms will earn "too much" from covid-19

As I write below, that's entirely the wrong focus

We must be willing to reward value because today's prices send signals to future market participants (1/4)
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/… Truly effective covid-19 treatments generate value in a variety of ways -- and help explain how to think about the value of innovation overall

When evaluating value of new drugs, we often focus on clinical value to patient. However, that's only a portion of value created (2/4)

Dabo Swinney (coach of @ClemsonFB) is signing a new contract for 10 years/$93 million.

I just want to remind people he's a horrible hypocrite.

Here's Dabo talking about how paying players leads to "entitlement." Apparently, only the coach gets to be "entitled" in that way (1/4) To be clear, by "entitled" he means earning something even in ballpark of one's marginal product, a concept Dabo is OK with when demanding over $9 million/year to coach "amateurs."

For someone who didn't get into coaching to "make money" he's sure warmed up to the concept (2/4)

If you're interested in healthcare strategy -- this is a must read. There are two sets of compelling stories here.

First, can retail pharmacies transition into the coordinating mechanism for people with chronic conditions.

Obviously, in the current form they siimply can't (1/5)

https://twitter.com/AishaAlMuslim/status/1113801316449624064

But these organizations are transforming their physical stores to have new sets of assets and activities.

The new "health hubs" or "health centers" will have more space dedicated to healthcare and likely new providers to help make the chronically ill healthier (2/5)