Now, a study co-authored by MIT economists sheds new light on these dynamics, examining the role that geography has played in the crisis. The results show how state-level policies inadvertently contributed to the rise of opioid addiction, and how addiction itself is a central driver of the long-term problem. The research analyzes data about people who moved within the U.S., as a way of addressing a leading question about the crisis: How much of the problem is attributable to local factors, and to what extent do people have individual characteristics making them prone to opioid problems' 'We find a very large role for place-based factors, but that doesn't mean there aren't person-based factors as well,' says MIT economist Amy Finkelstein, co-author of a new paper detailing the study's findings. 'As is usual, it's rare to find an extreme answer, either one or the other.' In scrutinizing the role of geography, the scholars developed new insights about the spread of the crisis in...
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