Recent economic literature has advanced the notion that cognitive biases and behavioural barriers may be important influencers of uptake decisions in respect of public programs that are designed to help disadvantaged people. This paper provides the first evidence on the determinants of uptake of...

Using data of the largest online job board in China, Zhaopin.com, we examine the impacts of the lockdown policy on the Chinese labor market demand during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The analyses reveal that the lockdown policy, which was implemented in Wuhan on January 23, 2020,...

Low-income people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have limited access to healthcare when they are sick. To address this issue, the governments of LMICs have initiated health insurance programs that target these poor populations. However, the health benefits these programs provide are...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is bringing about once-in-a-century changes to human society. Three key properties escalate the COVID-19 pandemic into a syndemic. To address this triple crisis, we discuss the importance of integrating early, targeted and coordinated public...

Measures to contain the Corona virus (COVID-19) may pay off in terms of slowing down proliferation. The proliferation trend in France and Germany now exceeds the one in Italy, South Korea and Japan. At the same time, the containment measures seem more intense in Italy, South Korea and Japan than...

Using longitudinal data from a representative UK panel, we focus on a group of apparently healthy individuals with no history of disability or major chronic health condition at baseline. A latent variable structural equation model is used to analyse the predictive role of latent baseline...

One in every six U.S. adults suffers from mental health problems. Mental illnesses, as measured in disability-adjusted life years, account for nearly 6.2% of the total disease burden worldwide and are considered to be one of the leading causes of death by injury, second only to road accidents....

We derive a model in which firms operate in an epidemic environment and internalize infections among their employees in the workplace. The model is calibrated to fit the properties of the Covid-19 epidemic. We show that firms have incentives to fight against infections and can do so very...

This paper examines the growth effect of one of the largest nutrition assistance programs in early life. The program covers 5.8 million children in poor rural China and provides 6-24-month old children with a free nutrition supplement that contains nine essential micronutrients. We utilize a...

Using officially registered weekly death data, we estimate a baseline count of excess deaths during 2020 in England and Wales. We break down this number by region, age, gender, place, and cause of death. Our results suggest that there were 82,428 excess deaths in 2020 after the pandemic onset....