Influenza vaccination could be a cost-effective way to reduce costs in terms of human lives and productivity losses, but low take-up rates and vaccination unintentionally causing moral hazard may decrease its benefits. We ran a natural field experiment in cooperation with a bank in Ecuador,...

We evaluate the impact of government mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60%...

We investigate the impact of health aid on infant mortality conditional on the quality of governance in 96 recipient countries. Our analysis applies the long difference estimator and instrumental variable estimation, with aid instrumented by donor government fractionalization interacted with the...

Micro-based and macro-based approaches have been used to assess the effects of health on economic growth. Micro-based approaches aggregate the return on individual health from Mincerian wage regressions to derive the macroeconomic effects of population health. Macro-based approaches estimate a...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

In response to the epidemic of prescription-drug abuse, now 49 US states have passed legislation to establish Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs). These programs track controlled-substance prescribing and usage behavior in an effort to improve patient outcomes and identify and preempt...

This study is an empirical assessment of the impact of the drug decriminalization policy followed by Portugal in July, 2001. We investigate especially the impact of the policy change on the price of illicit drugs. The analysis is performed using a difference-in-differences approach and a...

Governments worldwide are increasingly concerned about the booming CBD (cannabidiol) products. However, little is known about the impact of their liberalization. We study a unique case of unintended liberalization of a CBD-based product (light cannabis) that occurred in Italy in 2017. Using...

Reference prices constitute a main determinant of patient health care reimbursement in many countries. We study the effects of a change from an "external" (based on a basket of prices in other countries) to an "internal" (based on comparable domestic products) reference price system.We find that...

We study the impact of expert reviews on the demand for HIV treatments. A novel feature of our study is that we observe two reviews for each HIV drug and focus attention on consumer responses when experts disagree. Reviews are provided by both a doctor and an activist in the HIV lifestyle...