Previous research has documented lower vaccination rates among ethnic and racial minorities as well as foreign-born people, thus raising concerns about health inequities during pandemics. We analyzed influenza vaccination rates among children with US-born parents and those with at least one...

A large literature documents that childhood health shocks have lasting negative consequences for adult outcomes. This paper demonstrates that the adversity of childhood physical disability can be mediated by individuals' educational and occupational choices, which reflect their comparative...

We use data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) to compare measures of socioeconomic inequality in psychological distress, measured by the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), before (Waves 9 and the Interim 2019 Wave) and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (April to July...

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a major source of concern has been its effect on mental health. Using pre-pandemic information and five customized questionnaires in the Dutch LISS panel, we investigate how mental health in the working population has evolved along with the most...

We investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on self-employed people's mental health. Using representative longitudinal survey data from Germany, we reveal differential effects by gender: whereas self-employed women experienced a substantial deterioration in their mental health,...

Viruses are a major threat to human health, and - given that they spread through social interactions - represent a costly externality. This paper addresses three main issues: i) what are the unintended consequences of economic activity on the spread of infections? ii) how efficient are measures...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...

In an effort to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries around the globe adopted social distancing measures. Previous studies have relied on the geographical and temporal variation in the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to show that early adoption of NPIs...

Vaccination represents a canonical example of externalities in economics, yet there are few estimates of their magnitudes. I estimate social and externality benefits of influenza vaccination in two settings. First, using a natural experiment, I estimate the impacts of aggregate vaccination rates...

We use high-frequency data from location-based mobile phone records to measure domestic air travel patterns of the Chinese population during the Covid-19 pandemic. The travel and tourism industry is a key driver of China's domestic economy and data from this industry helps serve as an objective...