Tim Halliday
Public Health Report: Vaccination Booster Uptake Lags as COVID Impact Reach Widens
As we enter a new phase of the pandemic, Hawai‘i’s populations are becoming more confident that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, driving COVID-19 booster uptake down. However, significant impacts exacerbated by the pandemic, including long COVID, mental health issues, and the negative effects of long COVID on unemployment pose significant challenges that warrant […]
Read MoreVOG – Using Volcanic Eruptions to Estimate the Impact of Pollutants on Learning Outcomes
By Rachel Inafuku. Joint research with Tim Halliday, Lester Lusher and Aureo de Paula. Introduction While an extensive number of studies have shown that pollution is detrimental to human health, a smaller, growing body of literature has found that pollution also negatively impacts cognitive performance. Research has shown that increases in pollutants lead to decreased […]
Read MoreVOG: Using Volcanic Eruptions to Estimate the Impact of Air Pollution on Student Learning Outcomes
This study pairs variation stemming from volcanic eruptions from Kilauea with the census of Hawai‘i’s public schools student test scores to estimate the impact of particulates and sulfur dioxide on student performance. We leverage spatial correlations in pollution in conjunction with proximity to Kilauea and wind direction to construct predictions of pollution exposure at each […]
Read MoreNew publication in Journal of General Internal Medicine
A new publication led by UHERO’s Tim Halliday and Ruben Juarez describes how the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic created a perfect storm in which private laboratories can earn huge profits from PCR testing while potentially impacting health care premium costs. Halliday, T., Tan, C., Juarez, R. et al. Financial Implications of COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction Tests on […]
Read MoreFinancial Implications of COVID-19 Polymerase Chain Reaction Tests on Independent Laboratories
During the COVID-19 pandemic, independent laboratories provided critically needed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests (Current Procedure Terminology Code: 87635) to identify positive COVID-19 patients. The Families First and Coronavirus Relief Act and CARES Act require commercial insurance plans to cover COVID-19 testing costs without any cost-sharing for patients, but do not set the price.1,2 Prior […]
Read MoreCompact for care: how the Affordable Care Act marketplaces fell short for a vulnerable population in Hawaii
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010 to expand access to health insurance in the USA and promote innovation in health care delivery. While the law significantly reduced the proportion of uninsured, the market-based protection it provides for poor and vulnerable US residents is an imperfect substitute for government programs such […]
Read MoreIntra-familial transfers, son preference, and retirement behavior in South Korea
Abstract: We consider the nexus of intra-familial transfers, the sex composition of the sibship, and parental retirement behavior in South Korea. To investigate this, we employ the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging and a research design that relies on plausibly exogenous variation in the sex composition of the sibship. We provide evidence that it costs […]
Read MoreExpanding Health Insurance for the Elderly of the Philippines
Abstract: This paper evaluates a Filipino policy that expanded health insurance coverage of its senior citizens, aged 60 and older, in 2014. We employ an instrumental variables estimator in which the first stage is a difference-in-differences specification that exploits the age discontinuity at age 60, along with data from before and after the policy. First stage […]
Read MoreThe Economics of Health and Migration
Abstract: Migration and health are intimately connected. It is known that migrants tend to be healthier than non-migrants. However, the mechanisms for this association are elusive. On the one hand, the costs of migration are lower for healthier people, thereby making it easier for the healthy to migrate. Empirical evidence from a variety of contexts shows […]
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