Is Your Doctor Working Under a Noncompete Agreement?

1 of 5

Physicians, like so many occupations, are increasingly required to sign noncompete agreements, sharply reducing their occupational mobility and limiting choices that patients have. Separate research covering 16 million people found:

Losing access to a longtime primary doctor increased patient mortality by 4%.

Losing access doesn’t affect outcomes.

Mortality actually declined (improved) 4% when patients were separated from a longtime physician.

Read on: The Federal Trade Commission has proposed banning all noncompetes, which cover about 1 in 5 U.S. workers, many at lower incomes. The move would lift worker pay by $250 billion or more a year, the FTC estimates.

2 of 5

Nearly half the states in the U.S. raised their minimum wage to start 2024, and the wage levels are often quite different in states adjacent to each other (Idaho is at the federal minimum of $7.25, while Washington State is at $16.28.) When a low-wage state raises its minimum wage:

Workers pour across the border.

It doesn’t affect migration across state lines.

It reduces the outflow of low-wage workers but doesn’t attract out-of-staters.

Read on: Moving across state lines for a minimum wage job would likely be more costly than staying put, researchers suggest.

3 of 5

Tweeting an image or video along with a company’s quarterly earnings — most often done to accompany unusually good news — helps goose the stock price about 2%, researchers found. That gain:

Then compounds over the next 90 days, further rewarding investors.

Evaporates by the next quarterly earnings report.

Reverses course and ends up with a 2% decline 90 days later.

Read on: The Securities and Exchange Commission has endorsed the use of visuals in financial disclosures, but this outcome doesn’t seem to be what it had in mind.

4 of 5

A company reporting strong sales growth even as Google search volume on its products declines, researchers found, may have:

Shifted all its ads over to Bing.

Reinstituted billboard advertising.

Overstated its sales.

Read on: A mismatch between sales growth and Google search volume significantly raises the odds a company will later restate its results.

5 of 5

Sharing clinical trial results could speed cancer research and save lives. And failure to report results within one year can lead to $10,000-a-day fines by the Food and Drug Administration. Three years after trials are complete:

Compliance was at 100%.

Compliance was at 56%.

Compliance was at 73%.

Read on: The FDA almost never cites trial sponsors for noncompliance.