We provide novel evidence on the role of negative social comparisons in population health behaviors by exploiting variation in Miss America and Miss USA beauty pageant winners. We show that there was more front-page newspaper coverage and more pageant-related internet search behavior following a...

We provide novel evidence on the role of social comparisons in shaping adolescent body misperception. Using an instrumental variables approach leveraging variation in relative age generated by school entry cutoff months and data from the Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children study, we show...

Property taxes in developing countries are plagued by noncompliance and can exacerbate liquidity constraints. We characterize optimal enforcement and taxation policies as functions of revenue elasticities and measures of taxpayer hardship. We estimate these parameters using multiple sources of...