This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage triggered a heated debate. A major point of controversy is whether community use of masks creates a false sense of security that would diminish physical distancing, counteracting any potential direct benefit from...

This study analyzes the causal effect of an increase in the retirement age on health. We exploit a sizable cohort-specific pension reform for women using two complementary empirical approaches - a Regression Discontinuity Design and a Difference-in-Differences approach. The analysis is based on...

On July 13, 2020 a complete nation-wide ban was placed on the sale and transport of alcohol in South Africa. This paper evaluates the impact of this sudden and unexpected five-week alcohol prohibition on mortality due to unnatural causes. We find that the policy reduced the number of unnatural...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the introduction of mandatory face mask usage was accompanied by a heated debate. It was argued that community use of masks creates a false sense of security that could decrease social distancing, thus making matters worse. We conducted a randomized field experiment...

To fight the spread of COVID-19, many countries implemented unprecedented social distancing policies. This is the first paper that uses an event-study approach to examine the effects of the German social distancing policies on (a) individual behavior and (b) the spread of the epidemic. Combining...

Governments across the world have implemented restrictive policies to slow the spread of COVID-19. Recommended face mask use has been a controversially discussed policy, among others, due to potential adverse effects on physical distancing. Using a randomized field experiment (N=300), we show...

Elections may take place in precarious environments that even pose health risks. I consider the case of Bavaria, where close to ten million people were asked to vote in the municipal elections on March 15 of 2020, to quantify the toll of elections in a pandemic. Despite declaring a state of...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous impact on social and economic life and in particular. for human health care. In this paper, we document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying policies on individual health care utilization. We use detailed administrative...

Despite the fact that 30 percent of opioid overdoses also involve a benzodiazepine, there is little policy guidance on how to curb concurrent misuse and even less evidence on how changes to co-prescribing practices can affect patients' economic trajectories. In 2012, Austria restricted access to...