This paper provides field evidence on (a) how price framing affects consumers' decision to switch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurance can be influenced by policymakers through simple regulatory efforts. In 2009, in order to foster competition...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of reference-dependent effects of unemployment on mental well-being. We show that the negative effect of unemployment on mental well-being depends on expectations about the future employment status. Several contributions to the literature have shown that...

This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance...

This paper uses Hierarchical Bayes Models to model and estimate spatial health effects in Germany. We combine rich individual-level household panel data from the German SOEP with administrative county-level data to estimate spatial county-level health dependencies. As dependent variable we use...

This paper estimates the effect of informal care provision on female caregiver's health. We use data from the German Socio-economic Panel and assess effects up to seven years after care provision. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis scrutinizes the sensitivity of the results with respect to...

This study comprehensively assesses the immediate effects of extreme weather conditions and high concentrations of ambient air pollution on population health. For Germany and the years 1999 to 2008, we link the universe of all 170 million hospital admissions, along with all 8 million deaths,...

Using both household and linked employer-employee data for Germany, we assess the effects of non-union representation in the form of works councils on (1) individual sickness absence rates and (2) a subjective measure of personnel problems due to sickness absence as perceived by a firm's...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's sixteen federal states. We exploit this variation in the timing of state bans to identify the effect that...

Using SOEP panel data and difference-in-differences methods, this study is the first to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of four different health care cost containment measures within an integrated framework. The four measures investigated were introduced in Germany in 1997 to reduce moral...

Indirect psychological effects induced by crime are likely to contribute significantly to the total costs of crime beyond the financial costs of direct victimization. Using detailed crime statistics for the whole of Germany and linking them to individual-level mental health information from the...