Research

This paper examines the effects of state-level adult and child seasonal flu vaccination rates on hourly real wages for women. Using an IV method to address possible endogeneity, we find a significantly positive effect of adult vaccination on women's wages. Furthermore, we show that this effect is stronger for working mothers in age groups 16-24 and 25-44, and those with younger children aged 6 months-12 years. We also find that children's vaccination has a significantly positive effect on mothers' wages and that this effect is stronger for women with younger children. The results also show that the positive effect is particularly larger for non-college educated women, aged 16-44 with at least one child. These effects are also stronger for mothers with younger children.

@article{ghosh2026flu,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Demir, Firat and Kim, Myongjin and Chaudhry, Ahmed and Zhao, Junying},
  title   = {Stay healthy, stay employed: how flu vaccination might impact women's earnings},
  journal = {Applied Economics},
  year    = {2026},
  pages   = {1--16},
  doi     = {10.1080/00036846.2026.2656819}
}

This paper examines the effects of political protests during the Egyptian revolution between 2011 and 2014 on "missing women" in Egypt. The term "missing women" refers to the number of women missing in population because of sex-selective abortions, excess female mortality and lower survival rates caused by gender discrimination, infanticide, neglect, malnutrition, domestic violence, unequal healthcare access and provision, and poor treatment. We hypothesize that increased female participation in these protests improved women's empowerment and helped reduce missing women. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, our identification strategy is based on protest intensity heterogeneity, and changes in missing women for the age group of [0-1] before and after the protests across different governorates in urban and rural areas. We find convincing causal evidence that the number of missing women decreased significantly in high protest intensity governorates. Based on protest heterogeneity across different periods, we also show that this effect was most visible after the fourth and final phase of protests. As for possible channels, we find that domestic violence during pregnancy incidence fell significantly in treatment areas, while both relative vaccination rate of girls aged [0-1] as well as women's empowerment increased significantly.

@article{demir2026missingwomen,
  author  = {Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Xu, Zhengang},
  title   = {The Effects of Female Political Participation on Missing Women: Evidence from the Egyptian Protests of 2011--2014},
  journal = {Journal of Comparative Economics},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {54},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {194--213},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.jce.2025.09.003}
}

Autor and Dorn (Am Econ Rev 103(5):1553-1597, 2013) provide an explanation of the polarization of US employment and wages for the period 1980-2005. Using the 1980 Census and 2005 American Community Survey data, this study replicates the estimation results of Autor and Dorn (2013) for employment polarization in all major occupation groups and qualitatively matches the wage polarization results. Also, we investigate the puzzle of why employment and wages changed in opposite directions only in clerical and administrative support occupations in 1980-2005.

@article{ghosh2023routine,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {The Puzzle of Changes in Employment and Wages in Routine Task-intensive Occupations},
  journal = {Empirical Economics},
  year    = {2023},
  volume  = {65},
  number  = {4},
  pages   = {1965--1980},
  doi     = {10.1007/s00181-023-02394-x}
}

Breastfeeding has significant health and human capital effects on both mothers and infants. However, breastfeeding rates vary significantly within and across countries as societal, political, economic and cultural factors along with individual choices shape the breastfeeding practices. Using data from the Egyptian Demographic and Health Surveys, this study examines the effects of first motherhood timing, availability of breastmilk substitutes, and mothers' education levels on breastfeeding duration in a major developing country, Egypt. The empirical analysis, which corrects for the estimation errors that plagued previous research, shows that delaying the first motherhood timing and increasing the availability of infant formulas have statistically significant negative effects on breastfeeding duration. Furthermore, breastfeeding duration is found to be decreasing in mothers' education levels.

@article{demir2020breastfeeding,
  author  = {Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {Effects of Motherhood Timing, Breastmilk Substitutes and Education on the Duration of Breastfeeding: Evidence from Egypt},
  journal = {World Development},
  year    = {2020},
  volume  = {133},
  pages   = {105014},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105014}
}

Coauthorship has become the new norm in academics since the early 1970s because it enhances productivity. However, the gender gap in economics journal publication continues to persist, which explains why there are fewer women than men in the economics profession. This study investigates the role of coauthorship in the gender gap in top economics journals for untenured faculty members in the US. We construct a unique dataset from the CVs of academic economists from the top 96 PhD-granting economics departments in the US. Our results suggest that, compared to men, women are matched with less productive unique coauthors because women begin their academic careers in lower-ranked economics departments than men, which is associated with institutional gender bias. This poor-quality matching can explain approximately 0.60 fewer publications in the top 20 economics journals during the untenured period.

@article{ghosh2020coauthorship,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {Coauthorship and the Gender Gap in Top Economics Journal Publications},
  journal = {Applied Economics Letters},
  year    = {2020},
  volume  = {27},
  number  = {7},
  pages   = {580--590},
  doi     = {10.1080/13504851.2019.1644420}
}

Because of historically unprecedented increases in the prison population since the late 1970s, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Using Becker's (1968) framework on crime, this study investigates the causal relationship between incarceration rates and state minimum wages. Our identification strategy consists of a state-level fixed effects model and Autor and Dorn's (2013) two-stage least-squares (2SLS) approach. Using the historical local industry structure, we predict the change in employment shares of manual task-intensive occupations and use those as an instrument for state minimum wages. The fixed effects and 2SLS estimates suggest that a one-dollar increase in state minimum wage leads to approximately 12-25 fewer incarcerations per 100,000 state residents. Estimates of the heterogeneous impacts by race and gender indicate that the aggregate impact of state minimum wages is entirely driven by men.

@article{ghosh2020minimumwage,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Hoover, Gary A. and Liu, Zexuan},
  title   = {Do State Minimum Wages Affect the Incarceration Rate?},
  journal = {Southern Economic Journal},
  year    = {2020},
  volume  = {86},
  number  = {3},
  pages   = {845--872},
  doi     = {10.1002/soej.12400}
}

The Great Recession had the most severe impacts on the unemployment rates of the racial and ethnic minorities as well as less-educated young men. There were cross-sectional variations of these disproportionate adverse impacts. This study exploits the changes in regional variations of the unemployment rates of unskilled men before and after the Great Recession to explain the sharp fall in aggregate crime rates in the post-recession recovery period. Our 2SLS approach uses plausible exogenous sources of changes in the state employment growth of minimum wage workers induced by the national employment growth of minimum wage workers. We find that changes in regional variations of the unemployment rates of unskilled young men can explain approximately 25% of the fall in the aggregate crime rate in the post-recession expansionary period. Estimating the heterogeneous impacts of unskilled young men by race, we find that the fall in aggregate crime rate was mainly driven by the changes in the unemployment rates of young black men.

@article{ghosh2018recession,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {The Short-Run Effects of the Great Recession on Crime},
  journal = {Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy},
  year    = {2018},
  volume  = {1},
  number  = {2--3},
  pages   = {92--111},
  doi     = {10.1007/s41996-018-0014-8}
}

South Korea experienced a steep increase in wage inequality between the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008. This paper investigates the causes of the sharp change during that time period by looking at the contributions of changes in the distributions of schooling and unionization. The effects are estimated applying two robust distributional function based decomposition methods on Korean Labor and Panel Survey data for the time period 1998-2007. The results suggest changes in the distribution of schooling can explain about 10 % of the changes in the 90/50 percentile wage gap. The declining unionization rate does not have much impact on the upward trend of Korean wage inequality. In addition, aggregate decomposition results suggest that changes in labor force composition can explain a significant proportion of the total wage changes in the upper-tail of the distribution. Based on our findings we provide a list of policy recommendations to address the wage inequality issue in Korea.

@article{ghosh2016korea,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Lee, Jae Yoon},
  title   = {Decomposition of Changes in Korean Wage Inequality, 1998--2007},
  journal = {Journal of Labor Research},
  year    = {2016},
  volume  = {37},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {1--28},
  doi     = {10.1007/s12122-015-9217-9}
}

This paper proposes a semi-parametric procedure to determine the contribution of human capital variables in explaining the changes of U.S. wage distribution function over the period of 1990-2000. The effects of these factors are estimated by using the Chamberlain's two stage Box-Cox quantile regression approach. One of the main contributions of this paper is that it relaxes the linearity assumption of the conditional quantile function to estimate the counterfactual wage distribution function consistently. This paper also shows that the proposed method provides better estimates of capturing the effects of human capital variables in the two tails of the wage distribution while the results of other parts of the distribution are comparable with the estimates of the previous study which used the linear quantile regression approach. To summarize, these results suggest that this proposed approach is more applicable in cases where the behavior of the tails of the distribution bear much importance.

@article{ghosh2014humancapital,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {The Contribution of Human Capital Variables to Changes in the Wage Distribution Function},
  journal = {Labour Economics},
  year    = {2014},
  volume  = {28},
  pages   = {58--69},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.labeco.2014.03.006}
}

This study proposes a semi-parametric estimation method, Box-Cox power transformation unconditional quantile regression, to estimate the impact of changes in the distribution of the explanatory variables on the unconditional quantile of the outcome variable. The proposed method consists of running a nonlinear regression of the recentered influence function (RIF) of the outcome variable on the explanatory variables. We also show the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator and apply the estimation method to address an existing puzzle in labor economics: why the 50th/10th percentile wage gap has been falling in the USA since the late 1980s. Our results show that declining unionization can explain approximately 10% of the decline in the 50/10 wage gap in 1990-2000 and 23% in 2000-2010.

@article{ghosh2021boxcox,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Box-Cox Power Transformation Unconditional Quantile Regressions With An Application on Wage Inequality},
  journal = {Journal of Applied Statistics},
  year    = {2021},
  volume  = {48},
  number  = {16},
  pages   = {3086--3101},
  doi     = {10.1080/02664763.2020.1795817}
}

We define heterogeneous endogeneity as the case where a potentially endogenous regressor is endogenous for some sub-groups of the data but exogenous for other subgroups. We derive an estimator and test procedure based on the control function approach to deal with the phenomenon. We show that accounting for heterogeneous endogeneity can greatly increase the power of endogeneity tests and increase the precision of our estimator over traditional IV. While the gains get larger as the instrument gets weaker and as the relative size of the non-endogenous subgroup gets larger, we find efficiency gains even when the underlying instrument is very strong. We illustrate our approach with an example using data from Abaide et al. (Econometrica 70:91-117).

@article{ghosh2021heterogeneous,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Grier, Kevin and Kim, Jaeho},
  title   = {Heterogeneous Endogeneity},
  journal = {Statistical Papers},
  year    = {2021},
  volume  = {62},
  number  = {2},
  pages   = {847--886},
  doi     = {10.1007/s00362-019-01116-9}
}

Rothe (Econometrica 80, 2269-2301 2012) introduces a new class of parameters called "Partial Distributional Policy Effects" (PPE) to estimate the impact on the marginal distribution of an outcome variable due to a change in the unconditional distribution of a single covariate. Since the strict exogeneity assumption of all covariates makes this approach less applicable in empirical research, we propose the identification of the PPEs for a continuous endogenous explanatory variable using the control variable approach developed by Imbens and Newey (Econometrica 77, 1481-1512 2009). We also apply this proposed control variable PPE approach to investigate how poverty and black-white racial wage gaps contribute to the steep increase in the incarceration rate of black men over the period 1980-2010. Our control variable PPE estimates suggest that although the fall in the racial wage gap does not explain the changes in the incarceration rate of black men, changes in the poverty rate contribute about one-third of the steep increase in the incarceration rate at the upper-tail of the distribution.

@article{baltagi2019partial,
  author  = {Baltagi, Badi H. and Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Partial Distributional Policy Effects Under Endogeneity},
  journal = {Sankhya B},
  year    = {2019},
  volume  = {81},
  number  = {S1},
  pages   = {123--145},
  doi     = {10.1007/s13571-019-00190-1}
}

This paper is a narrow replication of Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (Unconditional quantile regressions. Econometrica 2009; 77(3): 953-973), who propose a new estimation method, called "unconditional quantile regressions". Using their empirical example, we confirm their results for the effects of unionization on US wage inequality during the period 1983-1985 for both conditional and unconditional quantile regressions. In addition, this paper applies the proposed estimation method to another paper by Autor, Katz and Kearney (Trends in US wage inequality: revising the revisionists. Review of Economics and Statistics 2008; 90(2): 300-323). The latter paper looks at measures of wage inequality in the US labor market data over the period 1963-2005.

@article{baltagi2017replication,
  author  = {Baltagi, Badi H. and Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Replication of Unconditional Quantile Regressions by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2009)},
  journal = {Journal of Applied Econometrics},
  year    = {2017},
  volume  = {32},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {218--223},
  doi     = {10.1002/jae.2477}
}

Leveraging a unique dataset on vaccine production and development, this paper assesses the effectiveness of two policy interventions in stimulating firms' output and innovation, including (1) a tort reform that reduces vaccine manufacturers' product liability; and (2) an expansion of Medicare's coverage of vaccine products. A difference-in-differences analysis indicates that both policies significantly boost vaccine production, with the impact of Medicare coverage expansion being 3-6 times larger in magnitude. There is also evidence suggesting that vaccine manufacturers are more likely to invest in R&D in response to this expansion, and the effect is likely driven by the underlying market structure.

@article{kim2025vaccine,
  author  = {Kim, Myongjin and Demir, Firat and El Fatmaoui, Ahmed and Ge, Qi and Ghosh, Pallab and Zhao, Junying},
  title   = {Vaccine Production and Innovation: Insights from Tort Reform and Medicare Expansion},
  journal = {Economics of Innovation and New Technology},
  year    = {2025},
  volume  = {35},
  number  = {4},
  pages   = {578--605},
  doi     = {10.1080/10438599.2025.2511865}
}

Objectives: The Indian Health Service (IHS) provides services to American Indian and Alaska Native individuals. However, IHS faces a longstanding underfunding problem. This article examines the extent, reasons, and alternative solutions for the IHS underfunding problem. Methods: We used the most recent 15-year quantitative and qualitative data from a fiscal administration perspective and established a conceptual framework from an economic perspective to better understand the nature of financing IHS. We applied the framework, especially efficiency and equity criteria, to examine the justifiability of proposed benchmarks for IHS budgeting and compare proposed solutions. Results: First, we identified budget planning and approving steps where significant IHS budget cuts occurred and why. Second, the United States has a federal Indian trust responsibility for American Indian and Alaska Native healthcare and thus mandatory spending in principle. However, in practice, it has been a discretionary spending decision for the United States to maximize social welfare subject to limited fiscal resources. Third, between the 2 economic criteria for resource allocation, vertical equity, instead of allocative efficiency, justifies more IHS appropriations. Fourth, entitlement mandatory spending on IHS was proposed by legislators during 2001 to 2004 but failed to receive Congressional votes. Nonentitlement mandatory spending and sequestration exemption were proposed by the President but were unapproved for fiscal year 2024. Conclusions: To our knowledge, this article is the first to evaluate discrepancies in IHS budget proposals, before and during enactment, to elucidate the stages at which underfunding may occur and the implications for future research and policy making by the IHS, Tribal Nations, and US Congress.

@article{zhao2026ihs,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and Jaggad, Rashmi and Kennedye, James R. and Ghosh, Pallab and Stewart, Kylie and Campbell, Janis E.},
  title   = {Empirical Evidence and Conceptual Framework to Address the Indian Health Service Underfunding Challenge},
  journal = {Value in Health},
  year    = {2026},
  volume  = {29},
  number  = {3},
  pages   = {403--412},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.jval.2025.10.003}
}

Objectives: This paper focuses on the national-level, inexpensive, demand-side vaccine policy, federal recommendations. It evaluates the effectiveness of 2008 and 2010 influenza vaccine recommendations, the spillover effect of the 2009 H1N1 vaccine recommendation on influenza vaccination, and heterogeneous policy effects across individual characteristics. Study design: Observational study with before-after comparison assessing changes in vaccination following policy implementation. Methods: We used nationally representative 2004-2015 NHIS data on 77,361, 23,653, and 238,866 individuals in age groups targeted by the 2008, 2009, and 2010 policies, respectively. Using the Linear Probability Model with fixed effects, we estimated policy effectiveness, spillover effects, and heterogeneous effects across individual characteristics. Results: Both 2008 and 2010 influenza vaccine recommendations boosted influenza vaccination likelihood by 20.9-26.5 % among children and 5.2-6.6 % among older adults. The 2009 H1N1 vaccine recommendation had a positive spillover effect, with a 5.7-9.8 % increase in influenza vaccination likelihood among younger adults. Low influenza vaccination likelihoods exist across demographic and socioeconomic characteristics: Children uninsured or privately insured, White, and low-income; Adults uninsured or publicly insured, White, African and Hispanic American, male, childless, self-reported poor or excellent health, low-educated, and low-income. Conclusions: Future policies may address the cost barriers faced by the uninsured, and multi-level non-cost barriers experienced by privately insured children and publicly insured adults. Future policies may consider extending beyond the federal recommendation, such as implementing simultaneous anti-poverty policies, to achieve minimum coverage and utilize the spillover effects of one vaccine policy to maximize coverage of other vaccines. Future research may investigate potential policy spillover effects among influenza, COVID-19, RSV, and new vaccines.

@article{zhao2025advice,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and El Fatmaoui, Ahmed and Shourian, Mahla and Lor, Bethanie and Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Power of Public Health Advice: Effectiveness and Spillover Effects of Federal Vaccine Recommendations},
  journal = {Public Health in Practice},
  year    = {2025},
  volume  = {10},
  pages   = {100667},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.puhip.2025.100667}
}

Objectives: Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion increased financial eligibility of low-income individuals. Its effects are mixed on influenza vaccination and unknown for Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Acellular Pertussis (Tdap) vaccination among pregnant women in the United States. We aim to address mixed and missing evidence in literature. Methods: We merged 44,320 pregnant women from 2011 to 15 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System with National Welfare Data by residency. Treatment group included Medicaid enrollees in post-ACA expansion states. Control included non-Medicaid enrollees in expansion states and all individuals in non-expansion states. We employed triple-difference method to estimate Medicaid expansion treatment effects on individual vaccination probabilities, and associations with socioeconomics and demographics. Results: Treatment group did not differ from control to vaccinate due to Medicaid expansion. Additionally, post-ACA Medicaid enrollees were 4.5-9 % less likely to vaccinate than pre-ACA non-Medicaid enrollees. Medicaid enrollees in expansion states were 2.5 % less likely to vaccinate against influenza than non-Medicaid enrollees in non-expansion states. African Americans were 4-5 % less likely, while Native Americans were 3-7 % more likely, to vaccinate than counterparts. Those with low parity and college education were 3.2-5.4 % and 4.8-10.6 % more likely to vaccinate. Individuals in high-poverty states were 0.6 % less likely to receive the influenza vaccine. Conclusions: We contributed different national data on understudied populations and the triple-difference method to the literature. Income-based Medicaid expansion did not increase the likelihood of vaccination among pregnant women. Non-income-based policies may target Medicaid-enrolled pregnant women in expansion states for influenza vaccination. Future interventions may target high-parity, low-education, and African American pregnant women in high-poverty non-expansion states.

@article{zhao2025medicaid,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and Jaggad, Rashmi and El Fatmaoui, Ahmed and Ghosh, Pallab},
  title   = {Did the Medicaid expansion improve immunization among U.S. pregnant women?},
  journal = {Preventive Medicine Reports},
  year    = {2025},
  volume  = {58},
  pages   = {103214},
  doi     = {10.1016/j.pmedr.2025.103214}
}

Context: American Indians and Alaska Natives (AIANs) are historically disadvantaged, losing 20 million (95%) of their population largely through epidemics since 1,520 and continuing lower overall vaccination coverage than other races. Determinants of this lower coverage are underexamined. Methods: Among peer-reviewed relevant articles since 1968, 39 studied AIANs solely; 47 drew general population samples, including AIANs. We employed rigorous economic definitions and framework of Individual Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. The Social-Ecological model identified determinants and mechanisms at five levels. Findings: Individual-level determinants include: (1) vaccine-preventable disease (VPD) and vaccine knowledge; (2) vaccine safety, efficacy, moral hazard beliefs; (3) preferences; (4) income and post-subsidy costs. Interpersonal-level determinants include others' knowledge and preferences. Organizational-level characteristics of Indian Health Service, Tribal, Urban Indian (IHS/T/U) facilities include: (1) supply of vaccine products, providers, services; (2) provider cultural competency, vaccine recommendations, standing orders; (3) patient reminder/recall. Community-level characteristics include: (1) socioeconomics and geographics; (2) information infrastructure; (3) cultural values, practices, languages; (4) historical epidemic knowledge; (5) historical harms thus distrust in government, health system, science. Societal-level determinants include: (1) federal recognition and entitlements; (2) tribal self-determination; (3) state Medicaid enrollment; (4) structural racism. Policy recommendations: Tribal interventions may (1) increase AIANs' knowledge about VPDs, vaccines, Medicaid enrollment; (2) design risk/cost-benefit calculations using scientific objective probabilities of vaccine safety and efficacy; (3) tailor messages to epidemic histories, narratives, values; (4) outreach by trusted messengers. I/T/U organizational interventions may reduce transportation costs while increasing provider supplies, cultural competency, and vaccine standing orders. Federal policies may increase IHS funding, tribal infrastructure, and AIAN data representativeness while eliminating structural racism and generational trauma. Conclusion: This article contributes to literature and practice. It is the first multidisciplinary, comprehensive overview of multi-level determinants and mechanisms of AIAN vaccination. Its findings highlight the gaps and limitations of laws and policies impacting AIAN vaccination. It recommends future research, culturally-appropriate interventions, and policies to close the gap to enhance AIAN vaccination and healing.

@article{zhao2025aian,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and Jaggad, Rashmi and Zhang, Ying and Campbell, Janis E. and Ghosh, Pallab and Kennedye, James R. and Ali, Tauqeer},
  title   = {Multi-level Determinants of Vaccination of the American Indian and Alaska Native Population: A Comprehensive Overview},
  journal = {Frontiers in Public Health},
  year    = {2025},
  volume  = {13},
  pages   = {1490286},
  doi     = {10.3389/fpubh.2025.1490286}
}

Objectives: As one type of vaccine policy, the effectiveness and spillover effects of the US CDC vaccine recommendations are inadequately evaluated. This study aims to fully evaluate its impacts on male adults, in addition to children, using better data. Design: A before-after study design to examine the CDC's 2011 HPV vaccine recommendation for men aged 11-21. Data analysis: Individual-level data included the 2010-2015 US National Health Interview Survey full sample of 7,000 male children aged 11-18, younger adults aged 19-21 and 22-25, and older adults aged 26-60. Pooled cross-sectional surveys contained individual-level vaccination, socioeconomic, and demographic information. Outcome variable is an individual HPV vaccination status, measured as individual probability of HPV vaccination. Dummy regressions were estimated by a Linear Probability Model (LPM) with fixed effects for target and non-target age groups. Results: The policy was significantly associated with a 14.8% (p < 0.001) increased individual likelihood of HPV vaccination for men aged 11-21. It was also associated with a modest spillover effect, a 5.6% (p < 0.001) increased individual likelihood for men aged 22-25 and marginally for men aged 26-60. African American men and men with poor health were 2.7 and 15.4% less likely to uptake HPV vaccines than white men and men with good or fair health, respectively. Conclusion: This study complements the existing policy evaluation literature on HPV vaccine recommendation among male children by including adults and using better data. Findings offer comprehensive evidence of the effectiveness and spillover effects of this recommendation type of federal-level policy, provide policy lessons for other vaccines, and identify vulnerable subpopulations as targets for future policies.

@article{ghosh2024hpv,
  author  = {Ghosh, Pallab and Chaudhry, Ahmed and Campbell, Janis E. and Kim, Myongjin and Smith, Kyle and Demir, Firat and Zhao, Junying},
  title   = {Impacts of the US CDC recommendation on human papillomavirus vaccine uptake, 2010--2015},
  journal = {Frontiers in Public Health},
  year    = {2024},
  volume  = {12},
  pages   = {1464685},
  doi     = {10.3389/fpubh.2024.1464685}
}

As of Aug. 2, 2021, 1693 injury claims associated with COVID-19 medical countermeasures have been filed in the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP), of which 686 claims were related to COVID-19 vaccines and urgently needed compensation decisions. However, from an economic and public policy perspective, we find that the CICP design has unintended consequences: locating CICP in the executive agency DHHS potentially creates a conflict of interest, and not permitting judicial review generates a lack of checks and balances, both of which could jeopardize justice. These fundamental problems would subsequently weaken four key performance indicators of CICP compared with its judicial counterpart in the Court of Federal Claims. CICP lacks accountability, transparency, and cost-effectiveness efficiency, with 94% of its total costs spent on administration rather than compensation. CICP's ability to compensate is also questionable. If COVID-19 claims were compensated at its historical rate, CICP would face around $21.16 million in compensation outlays and $317.94 million in total outlays, 72.1 times its current balance. To ensure just compensation for injured petitioners during COVID-19 and future public health emergencies, we recommend Congress (1) initiate a major reform by relocating CICP from DHHS to the Claims Court or (2) keep CICP within DHHS and make incremental changes by permitting judicial review of DHHS administrative adjudication of CICP claims. We further recommend Congress audit and adjust budgets for CICP and DHHS promptly propose an injury table for COVID-19 claims. This is the first study that contributes an economic perspective to the limited literature on CICP and also provides unique and rich economic data.

@article{zhao2022countermeasures,
  author  = {Zhao, Junying and Demir, Firat and Ghosh, Pallab and Earley, Austin and Kim, Myongjin},
  title   = {Reforming the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program for COVID-19 and Beyond: An Economic Perspective},
  journal = {Journal of Law and the Biosciences},
  year    = {2022},
  volume  = {9},
  number  = {1},
  pages   = {lsac008},
  doi     = {10.1093/jlb/lsac008}
}

@misc{zhao2025forefront,
  author       = {Zhao, Junying and Jaggad, Rashmi and Ghosh, Pallab and Kennedye, James R. and Stewart, Kylie and Campbell, Janis E.},
  title        = {The Indian Health Service Is Chronically Underfunded. Here Is How To Close The Gap},
  howpublished = {Health Affairs Forefront},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {10.1377/forefront.20250827.319208}
}