This paper investigates the relationships between social circumstances, individual behaviours, and ill-health later in life, with a particular focus on the development of cancer. A discrete latent factor model incorporating individuals' smoking and health outcomes (lifespan and time-to-cancer)...

This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths,...

This paper is the first of its kind to estimate the exogenous effect of schooling on reduced blood pressure and the incidence of hypertension. Using the changes of the minimum school-leaving age in the United Kingdom from age 14 to 15 in 1947, and from age 15 to 16 in 1973, as instruments, the...

What determines human beings' political preferences? Using nationally representative longitudinal data, we show that having daughters makes people more likely to vote for left-wing political parties. Having sons leads people to favor right-wing parties. The paper checks that our result is not an...

This paper shows that tax reforms involving an increase in consumption taxes and a decrease in income taxes cannot always be designed in a way that protects the welfare of some chosen class of consumer (e.g., low-income households), even if the government is indifferent to the welfare effects on...

Numerous prior experimental studies have attempted to elicit people’s preferences over income distributions through appropriately incentivated questions asking subjects to choose between distributions. Instead, we follow the theoretical literature and start with the principles underlying these...

We consider the comparative statics of consumer demand when there are consumption externalities in one commodity between two individuals. We show that the externality can switch goods which would naturally be normal into inferior goods and as a result th e externality can also lead to Giffen...

This paper focuses on the choice of centralization of public policy in an economy with two government levels. It argues that centralization by subsidiarity principle stresses a conflicting interest between different jurisdictions instead of working it out. The extent of the conflict of interest...

This paper analyzes the political economics of the composition of taxes. Taxes may be levied on income, or on expenditure, and the median voter is pivotal in the theoretical framework analyzed. As in Meltzer and Richard (1981) income taxes increase with inequality. Conversely expenditure taxes...

We examine the vertical transmission of overweight drawing upon a sample of English children, both adopted and non-adopted, and their families. Our results suggest strong evidence of an intergenerational association of overweight among adoptees, indicating transmission through cultural factors....