User-Generated Ratings in Healthcare-Evidence from Yelp

Yiwei Chen

Advisor: Kate Bundorf

Abstract: It is controversial whether user-generated physician ratings from online sources improve healthcare efficiency. Using the universe of Yelp physician ratings matched with Medicare claims, I examine what information on physician quality Yelp ratings reveal, whether they affect patients' physician choices, and how they change physician behaviors. Through text and correlational analysis, I show that although Yelp reviews primarily describe physicians’ interpersonal skills, Yelp ratings are also positively correlated with various measures of clinical quality. Instrumenting physicians’ average ratings with reviewers' “harshness” in rating other businesses, I discover that physicians’ average ratings increase their revenue and patient volume by 1-2% per star. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that after their physicians are rated on Yelp, patients do not receive different amounts of opioid prescriptions or show different health outcomes, although they have slightly more lab and imaging tests which are possibly wasteful. Overall, Yelp ratings seem to help patients—they convey both physicians' interpersonal skills and clinical abilities, bring patients into higher-rated physicians, and do not induce physicians to hurt patients’ health via ordering harmful substances.

Abstract:

What explains variation in secular and Islamist political identity and behavior? I argue that local variation in colonial settlement encouraged the development of distinct Tunisian political identities across localities. Using data on political mobilization at the moment of independence, I find that differential colonial investments in local land and schools produced divergent secular and Islamist political identities. This relationship operates through two mechanisms; first, high local land expropriation by the French weakened the religious land tenure system (the waqf system) and traditional Islamic schools in those areas. Second, the increased presence of agricultural colonial settlers is also correlated with a greater presence of local French schools and higher enrollment of native Tunisians in French primary education. This variation in colonial experience also informs contemporary patterns of partisanship and social cleavages in Tunisia.

Speaker Bio:

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Alexandra Blackman is a Ph.D. candidate in the Political Science Department at Stanford University and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

Abstract:

While numerous studies examine the relationship between social media and political behavior, scholars continue to debate its effects on political polarization. To inform this debate, we measure the effect of social media echo chambers on public opinion by evaluating 40,000 tweets around major breaking news stories, and comparing pre-and post-event policy positions amongst far and moderate right, and far and moderate left groups on Twitter. Our research improves on current approaches of measuring polarization by combining network analysis with supervised machine learning to examine what sampled individuals within different social media networks actually say about political topics. We find that individuals’ opinions on a variety of political issues converge on the modal opinion of media elites within their echo chamber following large-scale media events. We use this evidence to argue that people become more ideologically sorted—rather than more ideologically polarized—vis-à-vis social media echo chambers.  

Speaker Bio:

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Laura Jakli is a Predoctoral Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, and a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation draws on digital survey and ad experiments, machine learning, and qualitative fieldwork to examine the relationship between digital politics and political radicalization. Her related research examines how digital networks shape migration patterns and refugee behavior. Her research appears in International Studies Quarterly and the Virginia Journal of International Law. Her co-authored book chapter is forthcoming in Democratization (Oxford University Press).
 
 
 

Please join the Honorable BN Srikrishna, Chairman of the Group of Experts on Data Protection in India & former Justice of the Supreme Court of India, as he discusses the drafting of India's first ever data protection framework, submitted to the Indian government on July 27, 2018.

Hosted by Stanford's Global Digital Policy Incubator, the Center for Internet and Society, the Center for International Security and Cooperation , and the Handa Center for Human rights and International Justice

The Roots of Health Inequality: The Value of Intra-Family Information

Maria Polyakova, PhD

Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy

Maria Polyakova, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Health Research and Policy at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Her research investigates questions surrounding the role of government in the design and financing of health insurance systems. She is especially interested in the relationships between public policies and individuals’ decision-making in health care and health insurance, as well as in the risk protection and re-distributive aspects of health insurance systems. She received a BA degree in Economics and Mathematics from Yale University, and a PhD in Economics from MIT.

Abstract:

The Islamization of universities has been the cornerstone of the Iranian regime’s higher educational policy since its ascent to power in 1979. Since the victory of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) has relentlessly attempted to control and suppress dissident students and professors in an effort to train a new generation of ideologically driven students. Although the Islamic Republic was successful in co-opting a group of university students by means of ideological and materialistic incentives, a majority of students became less ideological and more critical of both the regime and its staple ideologies. These continuous struggles between the state and universities have given rise to several important questions: Why and how has the Islamic Republic Islamized and controlled universities? To what extent have these strategies succeeded or failed? Why and how have students responded to state domination?

Speaker Bio:

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Saeid Golkar is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Service at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and concurrently, a non-resident Senior Fellow on Middle East Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). His research focuses on international and comparative politics of authoritarian regimes with an emphasis on the Middle East. His book, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-revolutionary Iran (Columbia University Press, 2015), was awarded the Washington Institute silver medal prize.

Speaker Bio:

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Ilya Zaslavskiy is a member of the Advisory Board at the Hudson Institute's Kleptocracy Initiative for which he wrote a report How Non-State Actors Export Kleptocratic Norms to the West. He is also Head of Research at Washington-based non-profit Free Russia Foundation and head of Underminers.info, a research project exposing kleptocrats from Eurasia in the West. Ilya is an Academy Associate at Chatham House where he was a Fellow and also continues as an energy consultant for western companies working in developing countries. In September 2018 Council on Foreign Relations will publish Ilya's report on Energy Reform in Ukraine.

Does Diversity Matter for Health? Experimental Evidence from Oakland

Abstract:

We study the effect of diversity in the physician workforce on the demand for preventive care among African-American men. Black men have the lowest life expectancy of any major demographic group in the U.S., and much of the disadvantage is due to chronic diseases which are amenable to primary and secondary prevention. In a field experiment in Oakland, California, we randomize black men to black or non-black male medical doctors and to incentives for one of the five offered preventives - the flu vaccine. We use a two-stage design, measuring decisions about cardiovascular screening and the flu vaccine before (ex ante) and after (ex post) meeting their assigned doctor. Black men select a similar number of preventives in the ex-ante stage but are much more likely to select every preventive service, particularly invasive services, once meeting with a doctor who is of the same race. The effects are most pronounced for men who mistrust the medical system and for those who experienced greater hassle costs associated with their visit. Subjects are more likely to talk with a black doctor about their health problems and black doctors are more likely to write additional notes about the subjects. The results are more consistent with better patient-doctor communication during the encounter rather than the differential quality of doctors or discrimination. our finding suggests black doctors could help reduce cardiovascular mortality by 16 deaths per 100,000 per year - leading to a 19% reduction in the black-white male gap in cardiovascular mortality.

Marcella Alsan, MD, MPH, PhD

Associate Professor of Medicine and Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy and Primary Care and Outcomes Research, Stanford University

Marcella Alsan, MD, MPH, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine and a Core Faculty Member at the Center for Health Policy / Primary Care and Outcomes Research. Alsan received a BA from Harvard University, a master’s in international public health from Harvard School of Public Health, a MD from Loyola University, and a PhD in Economics from Harvard University. Alsan trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital - in the Hiatt Global Health Equity Residency Fellowship - then combined the PhD with an Infectious Disease Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Alsan attends in infectious disease at the Veterans Affairs Hospital.

Dr. Kenneth Dekleva's talk is one of the first times that a leadership analysis/political psychology profile of North Korea's Kim Jong Un has been presented in an academic setting.  He will discuss how such a profile can be useful to academic scholars, policy makers, and the national security community.

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TITLE:  The China Wide Web:  The information Dilemma and the Domestsication of  Cyberspace

Qitong Tom Cao
Major:  Political Science; Computer Science (minor); MS&E (Computational Social Science) (coterm)

Abstract:

In order to preempt severe public discontent, an authoritarian government needs its citizens to convey their true political attitudes. But it does not want their attitudes to be communicated among themselves, which may trigger protests or even subversion in case widespread dissatisfaction exists and becomes citizens common knowledge. This information dilemma thus poses a fundamental threat to the stability and governance of all authoritarian regimes. This thesis, however, argues that the Chinese government is resolving the information dilemma through an innovative approach  by domesticating its internet. On this domestic cyberspace, social media companies delete unfavorable content and report user data to the regime, which can be analyzed to reveal citizens true political attitudes. As such, the government manages both to restrict communication of discontent and to gain knowledge of the political inclination of the public. I will demonstrate formally that this domestic cyberspace presents an optimal solution for authoritarian regimes, and that the Chinese government could attract the bulk of their internet users to the domestic cyberspace despite its inability to fully block access to foreign websites. Finally, I will show empirically that domestic social media also helps increase propaganda efficacy, which reduces perceived level of discontent and further consolidates regime stability. Together, this strategy may potentially afford the regime an information advantage enormous enough to secure its stability without fear of overthrow.

TITLE:  Whose California?  Power, Property Rights, and the Legacy of the 1851 California Land Act

Marin Callaway
Major: International Relations; Spanish (minor)
 

Abstract: