Opportunity Lab

💊 Patients stop consuming high-value drugs, which also are expected to cause life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.
⚠️ Survey data suggests that patients are unaware of these risks – with only ⅓ believing that stopping their medication for a month could have life-threatening consequences.

The authors leverage this randomness to measure what happens when this annual budget is exhausted, effectively raising medication prices.

Key findings:
📈 Individuals with smaller monthly budgets consume fewer medications and face increased mortality.

#Medicare recipients receive an annual budget for prescription drugs, beyond which costs are paid for out of pocket.

But this budget is not prorated annually – so newly eligible Medicare patients who turn 65 in a given year experience different monthly budgets.

🧵 Randomized trials evaluate the costs of starting a drug – but what about stopping one?

Read the paper from Ziad Obermeyer, Amitabh Chandra, & Evan Flack: ziadobermeyer.com/wp-content/u...

What do the looming cuts to Medicaid really mean? Health policy expert Will Dow breaks down the risks—and potential state-level response.

“Not all of these adverse effects are inevitable.”

In a recent interview, Will Dow of @berkeleypublichlth.bsky.social unpacks how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will change the state of US #healthcare over the next 10 years.

👉 Read the full interview: publichealth.berkeley.edu/articles/new...

Narratives and destigmatization: the case of criminal record stigma in the labor market - American Journal of Cultural Sociology Sociologists use the concept of narrative as an analytical tool and theoretical concept to understand the stories that people tell and their role in social and cultural life. A key tenet of prior rese...

💼 In a study of how formerly incarcerated jobseekers experience the labor market, David Harding & coauthors found that employers favor applicants that describe economic motivations, as opposed to justice system failures, to contextualize their pasts. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

🍎 In FY2023, the National School Lunch Program provided 4.6B lunches. Now, Hilary Hoynes & coauthors find that school lunch reduces children's caloric intake by reducing soda/fat consumption. In the wake of #USDA cuts, this evidence should be top of mind: static1.squarespace.com/static/5ecd7...

🔋 The 2022 #InflationReductionAct represented the largest federal #climate investment in U.S. history. Research from John Bistline & Catherine Wolfram reveals the scale of what America stands to lose as recent policy changes dismantle these provisions: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...

🇫🇷A 2011 reform to the French wealth tax simplified reporting requirements for taxpayers whose wealth was below €3 million, a threshold further reduced to €2.57 million in 2013. Mathilde Muñoz + coauthors have now identified that the reform significantly spurred tax evasion (via @cepr.org)

👉 Our new research brief offers a look at how #unemployment insurance rules vary by states and have changed over time. Supported by the WorkRise Network at @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, Ellora Derenoncourt + Claire Montialoux are developing a database of #UI rules dating back to 1937. bit.ly/4lBI4Jz

💭 Envisioning a better future is crucial to creating one.

Kevin Yin is developing a spatial model to inform our understanding of what an ideal electricity grid for the United States might look like, as part of O-Lab's portfolio of work on Transportation & Infrastructure development.

💡Are you a 2nd - 4th year Berkeley undergrad looking to gain research experience? Interested in tackling environmental problems w/ data + stats?

Apply to O-Lab + @ucenergyinstitute.bsky.social's Energy & Environmental Economics Mentorship Program!

🔗 Learn more: bit.ly/EEEundergrad-2025

🚘 Many municipalities require that a percentage of private lots' square footage is set aside for parking, creating direct costs for governments and developers. John Kadlick is exploring indirect costs to productivity and effects on commuters. #econsky

#EconSky: @capolicylab.bsky.social is hiring a labor-focused data analyst.

Apply today: capolicylab.org/careers/data...

We welcome submissions for the 2025 Dissertation Award, given to the best Ph.D. dissertation on employment-related issues. The award furthers the Upjohn Institute mission to support and conduct policy-relevant research on issues related to employment, unemployment and social insurance programs.

Job Sorting and the Labor Market Effects of a Criminal Record Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

How does criminal justice system involvement interact with labor market success? Recent evidence from Sweden informs our understanding of the negative effect of a criminal record on earnings + employment.

📖 Check out the working paper from Conrad Miller + coauthors: www.nber.org/papers/w33865

Alice Schmitz & the next generation of environmental economics research | Opportunity Lab Alice Schmitz is a fourth-year PhD student in UC Berkeley's Economics Department who is investigating the physical and economic damages from natural disasters. For the last two years, she has also ser...

💬 For two years, Alice Schmitz has participated in O-Lab + Energy Institute at Haas's Energy & Environmental Economics Mentorship Program. We sat down with Alice to discuss her approach to mentorship, plus her work measuring the effects of natural disasters: www.olab.berkeley.edu/profiles-con...

🧠 A recent working paper from Enrico Moretti & Harrison Wheeler uses data on the construction of noise-barriers + home prices to quantify the economic cost of traffic noise – and offer insight into the benefits of #EV adoption. #econsky #policysky eml.berkeley.edu/~moretti/noi...

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The evidence is clear: social safety net programs are one of the most effective tools for lifting children and families out of poverty.

📬 Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on safety net research: bit.ly/OLab-Newsletter

Childhood Medicaid Coverage and Later-Life Health Care Utilization Exploiting a discontinuity in childhood Medicaid eligibility based on date of birth, we find that more years of childhood eligibility are associated with fewer hospitalizations in adulthood. For black...

🤒 More chronic health issues will go untreated, resulting in disabilities that affect wages + jobs:

The Long-Term Effects of Early Life Medicaid Coverage In this study, we evaluate how an expansion of Medicaid coverage for pregnant women and infants affected the adult outcomes of individuals who gained access to coverage in utero and during the first y...

Evidence on Medicaid’s long-term benefits suggest that cuts would create long-term ripple effects beyond coverage loss.

🚨 Uninsured people will likely rely more on emergency rooms, stressing healthcare systems
🤰 Fewer people will access prenatal care, predisposing children to health conditions:

In the past, economic research largely focused on the short-term costs of social safety net programs like Medicaid. Economists now spend more time on how these programs pay off over the long run.

Medicaid keeps getting more popular as Republicans aim to cut it by $800 billion Americans across the political spectrum like Medicaid and think it should get more funding, not less, according to a new poll from health research organization KFF.

According to preliminary estimates from the #CBO, Republicans' tax and budget bill, officially named the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," would cut #Medicaid by over $800B over the next 10 years – reducing enrollment by over 10M people. What would this mean for US health and economic outcomes? 🧵

Employers' negotiating separately with each worker fuels gender pay gap Women earn 5 percent less than men, on average, at employers that bargain individually

Many states ban employers from asking for workers' salary histories, but this doesn’t eliminate gender gaps in hiring—most workers disclose their histories, and their salary expectations, voluntarily. www.upjohn.org/research-hig...
@berkeleyolab.bsky.social‬ @sydneecaldwell.bsky.social‬

EITC at 50: A Rare Bipartisan Success Story - Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity A recent panel hosted by the Brookings Institution marked the 50th anniversary of the Earned Income Tax Credit as a bipartisan success story that has lifted up millions of working families. “EITC at 5...

The panel was also featured in Spotlight on Poverty — read more here: spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-ex...

YouTube video by Brookings Institution The Earned Income Tax Credit at 50: Past, present, and future

🎉 This year, the Earned Income Tax Credit turns 50!

On Jun 3, Hilary Hoynes joined a panel hosted by @brookings.edu focused on the impacts of the #EITC – which provides more than $70B in support to ~30M low-income, working families every year.

🎬 View the recording: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kgr...

US Senate blocks California’s electric car mandate in historic vote Today’s decision could upend California’s phaseout of gas-powered cars and diesel trucks, and its battle against air pollution. California plans to sue, saying it's an unlawful act.

This context matters as EV adoption is increasingly a focus of climate policy. The Inflation Reduction Act made significant investments in EV infra + trucking electrification, while the US Senate has voted to block CA’s EV mandate, setting the stage for legal battles. calmatters.org/environment/...

Political ideology is a key factor in #EV adoption, finds research from Lucas Davis: ~50% of new EV registrations occur in the 10% most Democratic counties, suggesting that widespread EV adoption may be harder to achieve than previously believed: faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ldavis/Davis...

🏘️🚘 O-Lab's Transportation & Infrastructure portfolio is supporting work by Silvia Farina, a PhD candidate in Business & Public Policy. Her project uses registration records to understand how car adoption has shaped the US, providing context for today's infrastructure, transit, + zoning policies.

Applications are open for the Energy & Environmental Economics Research Mentorship Program! If you're an undergraduate looking to gain research experience in climate + environment issues, visit our website to apply by Aug. 11. bit.ly/EEEundergrad-2025