Peer effects arise in situations where workers observe each others’ work activity. In this paper we disentangle the effect of observing a peer from that of being observed by a peer, by setting up a real effort experiment in which we manipulate the observability of performance. In particular,...

Whistle-blowing by employees plays a major role in uncovering corporate fraud. Various recent laws aim at improving protection of whistle-blowers and enhancing their willingness to report. Evidence on the effectiveness of such legislation is, however, scarce. Moreover, critics have raised...

More often than not production processes are the joint endeavor of people having different abilities and productivities. Such production processes and the associated surplus production are often not fully transparent in the sense that the relative contributions of involved agents are blurred;...

We estimate and decompose family income-related inequality in child health in the US and analyze its dynamics using the income-related health mobility index recently introduced by Allanson et al., 2010. Data come from the 1997, 2002, and 2007 waves of the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of...

This study examines the education gradient in three chronic conditions - diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. In the analysis, we take into account diagnosed as well as undiagnosed cases, and we use methods that account for the possibility that unmeasured factors exist that are...

This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the impact of the minimum legal tobacco purchase age (MLTPA) laws on smoking behavior among young adults. Using data from the confidential version of National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997 Cohort), which contains information on...

This paper uses a new measure of human capital, which distinguishes both quality and quantity components, to estimate the long-term effect of the Covid-19-related school closures on aggregate productivity through the human capital channel. Productivity losses build up over time and are estimated...

In addition to the humanitarian suffering and huge immediate economic costs, the war in Ukraine will have long-term consequences, among which are losses in human capital that will impact aggregate productivity for many years. Exploiting a new stock measure of human capital combining the quality...

20 years ago, Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999) established the by now famous "red-herring" hypothesis, according to which population ageing does not lead to an increase in per capita health care expenditures (HCE) because the observed positive correlation between age and health care expenditures...

One of the most important controversies in health economics concerns the question whether the imminent aging of the population in most OECD countries will place an additional burden on the tax payers who finance public health care systems. Proponents of the "red-herring hypothesis" argue that...