Distributional Causes and Consequences of Medical Innovation

Abstract

This dissertation examines the distributional causes and consequences of medical inno- vation through three independent papers. In my first paper I investigate whether gen- der bias distorts venture capital allocation in biomedical startups, examining whether investors forgo expected profit by systematically underinvesting in gender-discordant firms. I find that VC general partners systematically leave money on the table when not investing in founders of a different gender, and that misallocated investment may be driven by mistaken stereotypes rather than preference-based discrimination. The second paper constructs quality-adjusted healthcare price indices from the near- universe of administrative claims in the Utah All-Payer Claims Database, document- ing that standard methodology overestimates true quality-adjusted healthcare price inflation by approximately 120 basis points per year and that the incidence of health- care price inflation is regressive across the employer income distribution. The third paper develops a framework for measuring distributional health gains from pharma- ceutical innovation using QALY-denominated indices, finding that the demographic dimension with the most inequality depends on which component of health gains is examined: education and income dominate in diagnosis and utilization, while income alone dominates in treatment intensity. Together, these papers characterize how the benefits and costs of medical innovation are distributed across the population, iden- tifying the channels through which inequality in innovation operates and providing empirical frameworks for evaluating distributional equity in health markets.