We estimate the effects of health information technology designed to improve access to medication while limiting overuse through easier prescription renewal and improved information provision. We focus on benzodiazepines, a commonly prescribed class of mental health and insomnia medications, which are highly effective but potentially addictive. We study the staggered rollout of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and use population-wide, individual-level administrative data sets. We find that e-prescribing increases average benzodiazepine use due to increased prescription renewals. The increase is most pronounced for younger patients. E-prescribing can improve the health of elderly patients and may help to balance the access-overuse trade-off. Without additional monitoring for addiction in place, it may, however, also have unintended health consequences for younger patients, who are more likely to develop mental and behavioral health disorders.

Poor information flows hamper coordination, potentially leading to suboptimal decisions in health care. We examine the effects of a large-scale policy of health information integration. We use the staggered adoption of a nationwide electronic prescribing system over four years in Finland and prescription-level administrative data. Our results show no discernible effect on the probability of co-prescribing harmful drugs on average, but the heterogeneity analysis reveals that this probability reduces in rural regions, by 35 percent. This substantial reduction is driven by interacting prescriptions from different physicians and generalists. Information integration can therefore improve the coordination of physicians' interdependent decisions.

We study how the duration of being overweight earlier in life is related to subsequent long-term labor market outcomes. Our data on fraternal and identical twins born and raised in the same household contain weight measurements of the twins during their early adulthood measured in 1975, 1981, and 1990 and is linked to register-based administrative data on the earnings and employment from 1990 to 2009. When combined, these data enable an empirical strategy that controls for the family environment and genes shared by twins. We find that being persistently overweight during early adulthood is negatively associated with long-term earnings for both women and men. We find that for women, the association is driven by a decrease in labor market attachment, whereas for men, the association is driven by lower annual earnings.

We study a multistage, quality-then-price game between a public firm and a private firm. The market consists of a set of consumers who have different quality valuations. The public firm aims to maximize social surplus, whereas the private firm maximizes profit. In the first stage, both firms simultaneously choose qualities. In the second stage, both firms simultaneously choose prices. Consumers' quality valuations are drawn from a general distribution. Each firms’ unit production cost is an increasing and convex function of quality. There are multiple equilibria. In some, the public firm chooses a low quality, and the private firm chooses a high quality. In others, the opposite is true. We characterize subgame-perfect equilibria. Equilibrium qualities are often inefficient, but under some conditions on consumer valuation distribution, equilibrium qualities are first best. Various policy implications are drawn.