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This study empirically examines the association between hospital inefficiency and the decision to introduce electronic medical records (EMR) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) in a national sample of U.S. general hospitals in urban areas in 2006. The main research question is whether the presence of hospital cost inefficiency or other factors driving inefficiency in the production process of a hospital explain low adoption rates of health information technology (HIT) in a hospital setting. We estimated a logistic regression of HIT adoption as a function of hospital cost inefficiency scores obtained using a stochastic frontier analysis. The results demonstrate that hospitals with a greater degree of cost inefficiency were more likely to introduce EMR, suggesting that the benefits of EMR implementation in terms of improved efficiency were likely to outweigh the costs of adoption compared to hospitals that are more efficient. The results showed no association between cost inefficiency and the CPOE adoption decision.

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The lore on whether older Americans move is mixed. While the familiar stereotype is that retirees flock to Florida or Arizona, prior studies have found that their home equity rises modestly over time, suggesting that they tend to stay put. This paper examines moving trends, determinants, and consequences using the original cohort of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We find that a full 30 percent of homeowners in the HRS cohort move over the 1992-2004 period, but most moves occur close to home. Overall, two types of movers emerge from the analysis -those who affirmatively plan to move and those who react to changing circumstances. As proxies for these two types, this study uses the presence or absence of a negative shock, such as death of a spouse or entry into a nursing home. Our results show that the factors that help determine a move are similar for both groups, while the consequences of a move vary. Homeowners with shocks are more likely to discontinue homeownership and reduce net equity, supporting the hypothesis that households may view housing wealth as insurance against catastrophic events. Finally, while movers in both groups of homeowners experience improvements in psychological well-being, movers with shocks are impacted most by the shocks themselves.

Using Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition and relying on the consistent design of the Displaced Worker Survey since 1996, this study analyses various factors contributing to the rising dislocation of older workers, such as changes in tenure, industry mix, educational attainment, and labor force participation. Although in the past older workers were less prone to displacement compared with prime-age workers, this paper finds that older workers are now more likely to be displaced, conditional on education, manufacturing industry, and tenure. Declining tenure, a higher incidence of displacement in manufacturing, and a higher labor force participation among older workers largely explain the convergence of displacement rates among older and prime-age workers.