This paper presents new evidence on the distribution of risk attitudes in the population, using a novel set of survey questions and a representative sample of roughly 22,000 individuals living in Germany. Using a question that asks about willingness to take risks in general, on an 11-point...

We study food Engel curves among the poor population targeted by a conditional cash transfer programme in Colombia. After controlling for the endogeneity of total expenditure and for the (unobserved) variability of prices across villages, the best fit is provided by a log-linear specification....

This paper investigates whether cannabis use affects physical and mental health. To do so, information on prime aged individuals living in Amsterdam in 1994 is used. Dutch data offer a clear advantage in estimating the health impacts of cannabis use because the legal status of cannabis in the...

When agents have present bias, they discount more between now and the next period than between period t ( 1) and t + 1. How fast the future discount rate (evaluated today) decays is an empirical question. We show that the discount function can be non-parametrically identified with contracts that...

Vietnam is undertaking health financing reform in an attempt to achieve universal health insurance coverage by 2014. Changes in health insurance policies have doubled the overall coverage between 2004 and 2006. However, close examination of Vietnam Living Standard Surveys during this period...

In this article we characterize the evolution of inequality in hourly wages, hours of work, labor earnings, household disposable income and household consumption for Spain between 1985 and 2000. We look at both the Encuesta Continua de Presupuestos Familiares and the European Household Community...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we show that homeowners are able to maintain a high level of consumption following job loss (or disability) in periods of rising local house prices while the consumption drop for homeowners who lose their job in times of lower house prices is...

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we specify, estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand. Our model generalizes previous applied econometric work by incorporating realistic features of the housing market including non-convex adjustment costs from...

Using data on individual consumption from farm households in the Philippines, we construct a direct test of risk-sharing within the household. We contrast the efficient outcomes predicted by the unitary household model with the outcomes we might expect if food consumption delivers not only...

In this paper, we employ a rich data set at the individual level in order to examine which factors are most highly correlated with obesity. Our main result is that, even after controlling for income levels and other factors, we find that high 'price-sensitivity' for food products is associated...