To fight the spread of COVID-19, many countries implemented unprecedented social distancing policies. This is the first paper that uses an event-study approach to examine the effects of the German social distancing policies on (a) individual behavior and (b) the spread of the epidemic. Combining...

Elections may take place in precarious environments that even pose health risks. I consider the case of Bavaria, where close to ten million people were asked to vote in the municipal elections on March 15 of 2020, to quantify the toll of elections in a pandemic. Despite declaring a state of...

The opioid crisis generates broader societal harms beyond direct health and economic effects, impacting non-users through adverse spillovers on children, families, and communities. We study the spillover effects of a supply-side policy aimed at reducing the over-prescribing of opioids on women's...

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic had an enormous impact on social and economic life and in particular. for human health care. In this paper, we document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying policies on individual health care utilization. We use detailed administrative...

We study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic disease drug adherence. Focusing on asthma, we use a database that tracks the vast majority of prescription drug claims in the U.S. from 2018 to 2020. Using a difference-in-differences empirical specification, we compare monthly drug...

We show that Covid-19 illnesses persistently reduce labor supply. Using an event study, we estimate that workers with week-long Covid-19 work absences are 7 percentage points less likely to be in the labor force one year later compared to otherwise-similar workers who do not miss a week of work...

Despite nearly 70 percent of the American public supporting legalization of recreational marijuana, opponents argue that increased marijuana use may diminish motivation, impede cognitive function, and harm health, each of which could adversely affect adults' economic wellbeing. This study is the...

Teenage drinking is a top public health concern, generating social costs of over $28 billion per year, including substantial external costs associated with alcohol-related traffic fatalities. At the same time, the high rate of electronic cigarette ("e-cigarette") use among teenagers has become a...

We examine the mortality effects of a 1947 school reform in Japan, which extended compulsory schooling from primary to secondary school by as much as 3 years. The abolition of secondary school fees also indicates that those affected by the reform likely came from disadvantaged families who could...

Requiring graphic warning labels (GWLs) on cigarette packaging has become a highly contentious unresolved legal battle. The constitutionality depends, in part, on the likely impact of GWLs on smoking decisions, and whether they generate knowledge as opposed to emotional reactions against...