Nationwide health interventions are difficult to evaluate as contemporaneous control groups do not exist and before-after approaches are usually infeasible. We propose an alternative semi-parametric estimator that is based on the assumption that the intervention has no direct effect on the...

Using a matched insurant-general practitioner panel data set, we estimated the effect of a general health-screening program on individuals' health status and health care cost. To account for selection into treatment, we used regional variations in the intensity of exposure to supply-determined...

In a model where consumers have quasi-hyperbolic preferences, we compare immediate subsidies paid for health-conscious consumption and future subsidies rewarding good health outcome. We characterize the subsidy rates which implement the unbiased choice. These rates differ because of two...

Social insurance programs typically comprise sick leave insurance. An important policy parameter is how the cost of sick leave are shared between workers, firms, and the social security system. We show that this sharing rule affects not only absence behavior, but also workers' subsequent health....

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. In this paper we interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents'...

The distribution of health inequalities appears to exhibit a different pattern when samples of developing countries are examined. One explanation is the existence of a health Kuznets ́curve. This paper sets out as an exploratory analysis to test the latter hypothesis of an inverse U shape...

We still know little about what motivates the informal care arrangements provided in old age. The introduction of demand-side subsidies such as unconditional caregiving allowances (cash benefits designed either to incentivize the provision of informal care, or compensate for the loss of...

Little is known about the response behavior of parents whose children are exposed to an early-life shock. We interpret the prenatal exposure of the Austrian 1986 cohort to radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl accident as a negative human capital shock and examine their parents' response...

Many governments have banned strikes in public transportation. Whether this can be justified depends on whether strikes endanger public safety or health. We use time-series and cross-sectional variation in powerful registry data to quantify the effects of public transit strikes on urban...

This paper investigates the impact of the public smoking ban which came into effect in Italy on January 2005 on individual smoking behaviour. Current empirical evidence supports the existence of a negative effect of the Italian ban on smoking prevalence and consumption in the general population....