To assess the efficacy of Covid-19 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) on infectious disease containment in Europe, we first use weekly 2015-20 data on the spread of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) to compare the 2019-20 season of these diseases with the previous five....

Countries restrict the overall extent of international travel and migration to balance the expected costs and benefits of mobility. Given the ever-present threat of new, future pandemics, how should permanent restrictions on mobility respond? A simple theoretical framework predicts that reduced...

A substantial number of studies suggests a strong relationship between education and aspects of political participation and interest. Only a small body of literature, however, addresses whether these patterns represent causal effects. We add to this research and re-examine the question in the...

In the absence of first-best climate policy, we demonstrate that existing government institutions and policy established for reasons unrelated to climate change may induce climate adaptation. We examine the impact of temperature on ambient ozone concentration in the United States from 1980-2013,...

The gender income gap is large and well documented for many countries. Recent research shows that it is mainly driven by differences in working patterns between men and women, but also by wage differences. The tax-benefit system cushions the gender income gap by redistributing between men and...

SARS-CoV-2 vaccines give rise to positive externalities on population health, society and the economy in addition to protecting the health of vaccinated individuals. Hence, the social value of such a vaccine exceeds its market value. This paper estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for a...

Population policies are defined here as voluntary programs which help people control their fertility and expect to improve their lives. There are few studies of the long-run effects of policy-induced changes in fertility on the welfare of women, such as policies that subsidize the diffusion and...

The distribution of unemployment duration in our equilibrium matching model with spell-dependent unemployment benefits displays a time-varying exit rate. Building on Semi-Markov processes, we translate these exit rates into an expression for the aggregate unemployment rate. Structural estimation...

The trend towards activation has been one of the major issues in recent welfare and labour market reforms in Europe and the US. Despite considerable initial variation across national models with respect to the scope and intensity of activation, redefining the link between social protection and...

In this paper, we study gains and losses that accrue to natives because of immigration. The gain on the aggregated level is called the ?immigration surplus?, which can be seen as analogous to a consumer surplus. We derive changes in the earnings of native owners of production factors by...