This paper presents the first empirical assessment of the causal relationship between social capital and health in Italy. The analysis draws on the 2000 wave of the Multipurpose Survey on Household conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics on a representative sample of the population (n =...

Using Japan’s prefecture-level panel data from 1989-2001, this paper examines the influence of the social norm on a person’s smoking behavior when the complementary relationship between smoking and drinking is taken into account. The key findings through a dynamic panel model controlling for...

This paper explores the causal pathway by which poor fetal health translates into reducing educational attainment and earnings as an adult. Using insights from the medical literature, I decompose low birth weight infants into two distinct subtypes: a symmetric type, which is characterized by...

This work examines the socio-economic determinants of body weight in the United Kingdom by means of two recent waves from the British Household Panel Survey. While the patterns of overweight and obesity have drawn economists’ interest in recent years, our main contribution is to examine the...

Inspite of so much development in medical technology, Tuberculosis (TB) is still the problem for humans. Few studies, in Pakistan highlighted the factors that affect patients health related quality of life (HRQOL) with active TB. The aim of this study is to measure short form six dimension...

A decade ago, the political party of the Italian center-right voted a law restricting immigration. It emphasized severity in granting permits to stay and limited illegal immigration. However, the law became effective in early 2005, when the Italian parliament approved the decree for its...

This paper examines the causal effects of smoking behavior on body weight in Italy. In 2005, the Italian government introduced a smoking ban in all indoor public places. We use a regression discontinuity design, which exploits this exogenous variation across cohorts to achieve identification in...

In this paper, we use US data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to examine unintended side-effects related to smoking bans, and cigarette prices, and taxes on health behaviors. Our findings show that smoking bans not only had positive direct effects on smoking but also induced...

This paper evaluates the causal relationship between smoking and body weight through two waves (2004-2006) of the British Household Panel Survey. We model the effect of changes in smoking habits, such as quitting or reducing, and account for the heterogeneous responses of individuals located at...