TY - JOUR
T1 - First do no harm? Tort reform and birth outcomes
AU - Currie, Janet
AU - MacLeod, William Bentley
N1 - Funding Information:
* We thank Jennifer Arlen, Ronen Avraham, Daniel Klerman, Lewis Korn-hauser, Paul Oyer, Catherine Sharkey, Chapin White, the anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the NBER Summer Institute for many helpful comments. We thank Dan Carvell, Katherine Lo, Jacob Dy-Johnson, and Ahmed Sangbana for their help in assembling our data. Wanchuan Lin provided truly exceptional research assistance. We are of course, solely responsible for any errors. The Center for Law, Economics and Organization at USC, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the National Science Foundation provide financial support for this research.
PY - 2008/5
Y1 - 2008/5
N2 - In the 1980s and 1990s many states adopted tort reforms. It has been argued that these reforms have reduced the practice of defensive medicine arising from excess tort liability. We find that this does not appear to be true for a large and important class of cases-childbirth in the United States. Using data from national vital statistics natality files on millions of individual births from 1989 to 2001, we ask whether specific tort reforms affect the types of procedures that are performed, and the health outcomes of mothers and their infants. We find that reform of the Joint and Several Liability rule (or the "deep pockets rule") reduces complications of labor and procedure use, whereas caps on noneconomic damages increase them. We show that these results are consistent with a model of tort reform that explicitly allows for variations in patient condition.
AB - In the 1980s and 1990s many states adopted tort reforms. It has been argued that these reforms have reduced the practice of defensive medicine arising from excess tort liability. We find that this does not appear to be true for a large and important class of cases-childbirth in the United States. Using data from national vital statistics natality files on millions of individual births from 1989 to 2001, we ask whether specific tort reforms affect the types of procedures that are performed, and the health outcomes of mothers and their infants. We find that reform of the Joint and Several Liability rule (or the "deep pockets rule") reduces complications of labor and procedure use, whereas caps on noneconomic damages increase them. We show that these results are consistent with a model of tort reform that explicitly allows for variations in patient condition.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=42149107991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=42149107991&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1162/qjec.2008.123.2.795
DO - 10.1162/qjec.2008.123.2.795
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:42149107991
SN - 0033-5533
VL - 123
SP - 795
EP - 830
JO - Quarterly Journal of Economics
JF - Quarterly Journal of Economics
IS - 2
ER -