This dissertation consists of three empirical studies in public and health economics. In the first chapter I use inpatient level hospital data to examine the effect of state tort reforms on physician behavior. For the second chapter, I evaluate the impact of a large expansion in public health insurance for children on the labor supply of single mothers. In the third chapter I describe trends in health insurance coverage during the Great Recession, and investigate the degree to which business cycle variation accounts for the large decline in insurance coverage among adults during the recession. The first dissertation chapter explores the relationship between medical malpractice laws and the behavior of medical providers. Physician incentives in the current medical malpractice system may encourage socially wasteful behavior if doctors, out of liability concerns, provide medical services to patients of little benefit relative to the cost. Tort reform is often touted as a way to reduce liability induced provision of costly and unnecessary medical services. Empirical studies that assess the effect of tort reform on physician behavior offer mixed evidence of a behavioral response. Using a source of inpatient data not previously used in this literature, I investigate potential explanations for this lack of consensus. Results indicate some evidence that tort reforms influence physician behavior in a sample of heart attack patients, but not in a sample of stroke patients. These results are not robust to different specifications, however. I conclude that there is little evidence of a relationship between tort reform and hospital treatment for AMI or stroke.In the second chapter, I evaluate the implementation of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and its impact on the labor supply of single mothers. SCHIP, established in 1997, is an important source of health care access for children in near poor families. As with other means tested government programs, a worry is that program eligibility rules distort parental labor supply decisions. Because states have a large amount of flexibility in the design and administration of their SCHIP programs, there is considerable heterogeneity in state eligibility rules. Consequently, reduced form methods that associate SCHIP eligibility policies with labor supply must average outcomes over a diverse set of households with varying incentives for insurance coverage and employment. With data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS), I evaluate the program's effect on the labor supply using an instrumental variables estimation strategy that relates child insurance coverage with program eligibility rules. Results suggest that SCHIP led to an increase in public coverage and private insurance crowd-out, with no effects on maternal work behavior. For the third chapter, I investigate adult health insurance coverage during the Great Recession (2007-2009). The Great Recession is associated with large reductions in employment and health insurance coverage. However, it is not clear that the decline in health insurance coverage can be completely attributed to the recession. Using data from the CPS, I relate health insurance coverage for working age adults with state level measures of employment. Estimates from this model are used to generate out of sample predictions of health insurance coverage during the Great Recession. Results show that the proportion of adults without insurance coverage during the recession is greater than the level predicted by the regression model. These results are sensitive to different specifications of the model, however.
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