Becky Staiger, Laurence Baker, and Tina Hernandez-Boussard. "Provider Opioid Prescribing Behaviors and Opioid Use in Medicaid." Job Market Paper.
Abstract: Liberal prescription of opioids is widely believed to have contributed to the ongoing epidemic of opioid misuse and related harms within the United States and elsewhere. Policies aimed at curbing the epidemic have focused on encouraging providers to adopt stricter opioid prescribing behaviors. However, the extent to which the association between providers' opioid prescribing behaviors and their patients' opioid use reflects a causal influence of behavior versus patient-provider sorting is unclear. Using Medicaid claims data for three states from 2016-2021, we use provider exits from Medicaid to evaluate how enrollees with chronic pain are affected by a switch to a lower- or higher-prescribing provider. We find that among patients with prior opioid use, switching to lower intensity physicians leads to as much as a 75% decrease in opioid use, with evidence of increased hospitalizations. While we observe a 15% increase in opioid use among opioid-naive enrollees who switch to more intensely prescribing providers, the health effects are less clear. Our findings are similar when using an instrumental variables approach to correct for the potential endogeneity of the destination provider's prescribing intensity.
Stacy Chen and Becky Staiger. "Medicaid Expansion Increased Income Among Newly-Eligible Adults." Health Affairs Scholar. 2025.
Becky Staiger*, Valentin Bolotnyy*, Sonya Borrero, Maya Rossin-Slater, Jessica Van Parys, Caitlin Myers. "Obstetrician and Gynecologist Physicians' Practice Locations Before and After the Dobbs Decision." JAMA Network Open. 2025.
Media coverage: CNN, The Hill (Op-Ed)
Joseph Doyle and Becky Staiger. "Physician Group Influences on Treatment Intensity and Health: Evidence from Physician Switchers." AEJ: Economic Policy. 2025.
Other versions: NBER Working Paper No. 29613
Becky Staiger, Maddie Helfer, and Jessica Van Parys. "The Effect of Medicaid Expansion on the Take-up of Disability Benefits by Race and Ethnicity." Health Economics. 2023.
Other versions: NBER Working Paper No. 31557.
Becky Staiger*, Anran Li*, Diane Alexander, and Molly Schnell. "Enrollment Brokers Did Not Increase Medicaid Enrollment, 2008-18." Health Affairs. 2022.
Becky Staiger. "Disruptions to the Patient-Provider Relationship and Patient Utilization and Outcomes: Evidence from Medicaid Managed Care." Journal of Health Economics. 2022.
*Indicates shared first authorship