2019 Co-Best CEP Article Award Announced!

The Editors are pleased to congratulate the recipients of the 2019 Co-Best Article Award:


"The Effect of Parental Medicaid Expansions on Children's Health Insurance Coverage" (April 2019) by Sarah Hamersma, Syracuse University, Matthew Kim, University of St. Thomas, and Brenden Timpe, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 

As CEP  Editor Brad Humphreys describes it..."Health inequalities constitute a growing area of concern in society and the expansion of Medicaid forms the backbone of government policy addressing this form of inequality.  While most previous research focuses on direct targets of Medicaid expansion, this paper develops evidence that Medicaid expansions generate important spillover effects on a key vulnerable population: children.  Because private insurance crowd-out from Medicaid could actually result in decreased coverage of children, developing evidence of positive spillovers represents an important research goal.  This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation and an instrumental variables approach to show that Medicaid expansion generally increases Medicaid participation by children, although some evidence of crowd-out also exists.  The nuanced results will play an important role in refining this important policy initiative."     


 "Aid, Policies, and Growth: Why So Much Confusion?" (October 2019) by Shaomeng Jia, Muskingum University, and Claudia Williamson, Mississippi State University

As CEP  Editor Brad Humphreys describes it, "...Foreign aid policies represent a controversial, widely debated area in public policy.  This debate focuses on fundamental issues like whether or not foreign aid improves economic conditions in developing countries and what countries should receive foreign aid. This article brings some clarity to this contentious topic by undertaking a careful analysis of the impact of donor selectivity on foreign aid effectiveness.  While many argue that foreign aid should be targeted to countries with good existing policies like corruption reduction and maintenance of the rule of law, the paper develops convincing evidence of a lack of impact of such targeting after correcting for donor selectivity.  The paper develops important and timely evidence of interest to researchers and policy makers."