I'm the managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, published by the American Economic Association. It's an academic journal, but it's meant to be a journal that's readable by those who have some background in economics--like those who took several undergraduate courses in college in the subject. The AEA makes all of the articles the journal freely available on-line to all, and the Spring 2011 issue is now available.
I'll comment on the specifics of some of these articles over the next week or so, but here's the table of contents for the issue. It starts with a five paper symposium on "Constraining Healthcare Costs." The papers are:
David M. Cutler and Dan P. Ly, “The (Paper)Work of Medicine: Understanding International Medical Costs”
Amitabh Chandra, Anupam B. Jena, and Jonathan S. Skinner, “The Pragmatist’s Guide to Comparative Effectiveness Research”
Katherine Baicker and Dana Goldman, “Patient Cost-Sharing and Healthcare Spending Growth”
Mark McClellan, “Reforming Payments to Healthcare Providers: The Key to Slowing Healthcare Cost Growth While Improving Quality?”
Daniel P. Kessler, “Evaluating the Medical Malpractice System and Options for Reform”
Other articles in the issue are:
Susan Houseman, Christopher Kurz, Paul Lengermann, and Benjamin Mandel, “Offshoring Bias in U.S. Manufacturing”
Christopher Carpenter and Carlos Dobkin, “The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Public Health”
John A. List, “The Market for Charitable Giving”
Philippe Aghion and Richard Holden, “Incomplete Contracts and the Theory of the Firm: What Have We Learned over the Past 25 Years?”
E. Roy Weintraub, “Retrospectives: Lionel W. McKenzie and the Proof of the Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium”
Timothy Taylor, “Recommendations for Further Reading”