We exploit variation in the composition of local fish catches around the time of birth using administrative and census data on adult cognitive test scores, schooling attainment, and occupation among coastal populations in Colombia to estimate the causal effects of early-life consumption of...

Using proprietary data from Alibaba, we examine how the 2015 Food Safety Law (FSL) affects e-commerce in China. The FSL requires most food sellers on e-commerce platforms to obtain a valid, online license for retail food handling. Because the FSL was rolled out progressively, we have a rare...

In the mid-19th century, the urban milk supply in the United States was regularly skimmed or diluted with water, reducing its nutritional value. At the urging of public health experts, cities across the country hired milk inspectors, who were tasked with collecting and analyzing milk samples...

This paper reports estimates of consumers' preferences for plans to improve food safety. The plans are distinguished based on whether they address the ex ante risk of food borne illness or the ex post effects of the illness. They are also distinguished based on whether they focus on a public...

In the United States, drug safety and efficacy are primarily regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the legal system, which gives manufacturers large incentives to produce safe drugs and provide proper warnings for side effects, since patients can sue manufacturers that provide...

Comparing the safety of prescription drugs over time is difficult due to the paucity of reliable quantitative measures of drug safety. Both the academic literature and popular press have focused on drug withdrawals as a proxy for breakdowns in the drug safety system. This metric, however, is...

Implicit in the drug-approval process is a trade-off between Type I and Type II error. We explore the application of Bayesian decision analysis (BDA) to minimize the expected cost of drug approval, where relative costs are calibrated using U.S. Burden of Disease Study 2010 data. The results for...

This paper tests models of mutual fund market timing that (1) allow the manager's utility function to depend on returns in excess of a benchmark; (2) distinguish timing based on lagged, publicly available information variables from timing based on finer information; and (3) simultaneously...

Our primary goal in this paper is to ascertain whether the absolute and relative rankings of managed funds are sensitive to the benchmark chosen to measure normal performance. We employ the standard CAPM benchmarks and a variety of APT benchmarks to investigate this question. We found that there...