Advertising and Environmental Stewardship: Evidence from the BP Oil Spill.

This paper explores whether private markets can incentivize environmental stewardship. We examine the consumer response to the 2010 BP oil spill and test how BP's investment in the 2000-2008 "Beyond Petroleum" green advertising campaign affected this response. We find evidence consistent with consumer punishment: BP station margins and volumes declined by 2.

The returns to early-life interventions for very low birth weight children.

We use comprehensive administrative data from Rhode Island to measure the impact of early-life interventions for low birth weight newborns. Our analysis relies on a regression discontinuity design based on the 1,500 g threshold for Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) status. We find that threshold crossing causes more intense in-hospital care, in line with prior studies.

Predicting high-risk opioid prescriptions before they are given.

Misuse of prescription opioids is a leading cause of premature death in the United States. We use state government administrative data and machine learning methods to examine whether the risk of future opioid dependence, abuse, or poisoning can be predicted in advance of an initial opioid prescription. Our models accurately predict these outcomes and identify particular prior nonopioid prescriptions, medical history, incarceration, and demographics as strong predictors.

How Financial Literacy and Impatience Shape Retirement Wealth and Investment Behaviors.

Two competing explanations for why consumers have trouble with financial decisions are gaining momentum. One is that people are financially illiterate since they lack understanding of simple economic concepts and cannot carry out computations such as computing compound interest, which could cause them to make suboptimal financial decisions. A second is that impatience or present-bias might explain suboptimal financial decisions.

Pharmacy students' preference for using mobile devices in a clinical setting for practice-related tasks.

Objective: To examine pharmacy students' ownership of, use of, and preference for using a mobile device in a practice setting.

Methods: Eighty-one pharmacy students were recruited and completed a pretest that collected information about their demographics and mobile devices and also had them rank the iPhone, iPad mini, and iPad for preferred use in a pharmacy practice setting. Students used the 3 devices to perform pharmacy practice-related tasks and then completed a posttest to again rank the devices for preferred use in a pharmacy practice setting.

School Choice, School Quality and Postsecondary Attainment.

We study the impact of a public school choice lottery in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools on college enrollment and degree completion. We find a significant overall increase in college attainment among lottery winners who attend their first choice school. Using rich administrative data on peers, teachers, course offerings and other inputs, we show that the impacts of choice are strongly predicted by gains on several measures of school quality.

FUNGIBILITY AND CONSUMER CHOICE: EVIDENCE FROM COMMODITY PRICE SHOCKS.

We formulate a test of the fungibility of money based on parallel shifts in the prices of different quality grades of a commodity. We embed the test in a discrete-choice model of product quality choice and estimate the model using panel microdata on gasoline purchases. We find that when gasoline prices rise consumers substitute to lower octane gasoline, to an extent that cannot be explained by income effects.

FINANCIAL LITERACY, FINANCIAL EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES.

In this article we review the literature on financial literacy, financial education, and consumer financial outcomes. We consider how financial literacy is measured in the current literature, and examine how well the existing literature addresses whether financial education improves financial literacy or personal financial outcomes. We discuss the extent to which a competitive market provides incentives for firms to educate consumers or offer products that facilitate informed choice.