The empirical effectiveness of economic policies that operate theoretically through similar channels differs substantially. We document this fact by comparing an easy-to-grasp expectations-based policy, unconventional fiscal policy, with a policy whose implications are harder to understand by...

We employ a new macro-epidemiological agent based model to evaluate the “lives vs livelihoods” trade-off brought to the fore by Covid-19. The disease spreads across the networks of agents’ social and economic contacts and feeds back on the economic dimension of the model through various...

We evaluate Germany’s temporary value-added tax (VAT) rate reduction as a tool to stimulate consumer spending during the Covid-19 pandemic using a comparative case study approach. We construct a credible counterfactual for Germany in a two-step procedure. First, we carry out a careful...

We investigate the effect of education Conditional Cash Transfer programs (CCTs) on teenage pregnancy. Our main concern is with how the size and sign of the effect may depend on the design of the program. Using a simple model we show that an education CCT that conditions renewal on school...

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

This paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on gambling activity in China. Based on a theoretical model, we hypothesize that EPU increases the demand for hope which raises the willingness to pay for lottery tickets, resulting in higher lottery sales. We estimate a...

Nationwide health interventions are difficult to evaluate as contemporaneous control groups do not exist and before-after approaches are usually infeasible. We propose an alternative semi-parametric estimator that is based on the assumption that the intervention has no direct effect on the...