This paper evaluates the effect of smoking bans in public places on the exposure to tobacco smoke of non-smokers and contrasts it with the effect of excise taxes. Exploiting data on cotinine - a metabolite of nicotine - as well as state and time variation in anti-smoking policies across US...

The idea of regulating private health plans so as to favor major players and the "managed care" is incompatible with the guidelines of the National Health System [Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS)] and for this reason we defend instead a regulatory action aiming to strengthen the public sphere. In...

This project re-investigates the hookworm eradication efforts of the Rockefeller Foundation's Sanitary Commission (RSC) in the American South during the Progressive Era. The RSC worked to eradicate hookworm across 11 southern states between 1911 and 1915, efforts that have been linked to...

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...

This study analyzes the impact of COVID-19 deniers on the spread of COVID-19 in Germany. In a first step, we establish a link between regional proxies of COVID-19 deniers and infection rates. We then estimate the causal impact of large anti-lockdown protests on the spread of COVID-19 using an...

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made all the more clear that public health is a public good. Public health interventions try to encourage contributions to this public good. Digital public health interventions are increasingly being used to complement traditional public health interventions. The...

We develop a novel empirical approach to identify the effectiveness of policies against a pandemic. The essence of our approach is the insight that epidemic dynamics are best tracked over stages, rather than over time. We use a normalization procedure that makes the pre-policy paths of the...

The limited knowledge about the effect of deforestation on human health is an important gap for environmental and health management in Brazil and worldwide. In order to assess its occurrence and magnitude, we performed a panel analysis, linking data on deforestation and reportable diseases by...