We examine within a life-cycle set-up the choice of health and retirement. Health care contributes to a reduction in both mortality, determining the need to accumulate retirement wealth, and in morbidity, determining the disutility of work. The retirement age affects health through the value of...

This paper investigates the problem of an ``optimum population'' with respect to the age structure. Within a 3-period OLG model, with endogenous fertility and longevity, the optimal age structure, identified by number-dampened total utilitarianism, is generally failed in the laissez-faire...

Higher child mortality reduces the willingness of parents to invest in children's education and increases their desired level of fertility. In this context, economic inequality is not only decisive for human capital investments and the emergence of differential fertility, but also for agents'...

This paper investigates the impact of a devastating weather shock on child anthropometrics, using data from Mongolia. We employ a diff-in-diff strategy to identify the effect of an extremely harsh winter in 2010, which caused the death of about 20 percent of the national livestock. Results...

We exploit a policy change in Sweden to estimate the effect of copayments on the demand for children's and adolescents' usage of medical care. To this end, we use population-wide registry data including detailed characteristics of individuals and their medical visits. We examine whether the...

We study risk-aversion and prudence in medical treatment decisions. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate the frequency and intensity of second- and third-order risk preferences, as well as the effect of the medical decision context. Risk preferences are assessed through treatment...

This paper analyses the causal effects of educational mismatch on wages, individual health and job satisfaction. As educational mismatch is subject to unobserved heterogeneity in all of these fields, different identification strategies are applied to derive causal effects. In the wage...

Welfare aspects of longevity increases are often discussed neglecting the complex relationship between longevity and economic growth, which is the focal point of another literature. Combining both perspectives, we develop an endogenous growth OLG-framework to investigate how longevity affects...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of reference-dependent effects of unemployment on mental health. I show that the negative effect of unemployment on mental health depends on expectations about the future employment status. Several contributions to the literature have shown that the...

We analyze the impact of access to piped water on human capital formation as measured by test scores from standardized school exams at Brasilian primary schools. We fi nd a positive and signi ficant eff ect of around 11 percent of the standard deviation of mean test scores. The eff ect of piped...