We introduce a novel use of genetic data for studying social influences on behavior: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), we deploy the distribution of genotypes in a given grade within a school to instrument the influence of peer smoking on...

The ongoing debate about the economic causes of obesity has focused on the changing relative prices of diet and exercise. This paper uses a model that explicitly includes time and spatially varying community-level urbanicity and price measures as instruments to obtain statistically correct...

It will be politically difficult to liberalize international migration without protecting host-country workers. The paper explores the scope for efficiently managing migration using a competitive market for work permits. Host-county workers would have the option of renting out their citizenship...

The paper formalizes and tests the hypothesis that greater exposure to big shocks induces stronger societal responses for adaptation and protection from future big shocks. We find support for this hypothesis in various strands of the literature and in new empirical tests using cross-country data...

The claim that social protection is a luxury good--with a national income elasticity exceeding unity--has as been influential. The paper tests the "luxury good hypothesis" using newly-assembled data on social protection spending across countries since 1995, treating the pandemic period...