In response to strong revenue and income losses that a large share of the self-employed faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, the German federal government introduced a 50bn emergency aid program. Based on real-time online-survey data comprising more than 20,000 observations, we analyze the impact...

The empirical effects of place-based tax incentive schemes designed to aid low income communities are unclear. While a growing number of studies find beneficial effects on employment, there is little investigation into other behaviors of households affected by such programs. We analyze the...

In this paper, we investigate the use of interactive effect or linear factor models in regional policy evaluation. We contrast treatment effect estimates obtained by Bai (2009)'s least squares method with the popular difference in difference estimates as well as with estimates obtained using...

In recent years many countries of the European Union (EU) have implemented comprehensive smoking bans to reduce exposure to tobacco smoke in public places and all indoor workplaces. Despite the intense public debate, research on the impact of smoking regulation on health, particularly within the...

This paper focuses on the role of minimum wages, tax and benefit policies in protecting workers against financial poverty, covering 21 European countries with a national minimum wage and three US States (New Jersey, Nebraska and Texas). It is shown that only for single persons and only in a...

In response to COVID-19, dramatic safer-at-home policies were implemented. The understanding of their impacts on social distancing, travel and pollution is in its infancy. We pair a differences-in-differences framework and synthetic control methods with rich cellular tracking and high frequency...

Intergroup conflicts represent one of the most pressing problems facing human society. Sudden spikes in aggressive behavior, including pogroms, often take place during periods of economic hardship or health pandemics, but little is known about the underlying mechanism behind such change in...

Given the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus, the State has had to respond rapidly and quite severely to flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus. This has had significant implications for many aspects of life with differential impacts across the population. The lack of timely...

This paper is the first attempt to study the causal impact of "Brexit", namely the UK's departure from the European Union (EU), on the post-graduation mobility decisions of EU students in the UK. We exploit the British government's formal withdrawal notification under Article 50 as a natural...