When a negative shock affcts a cohort in utero, two things may happen: first, the population suffers detrimental consequences in later life; and second, some will die as a consequence of the shock, either in utero or early in life. The latter effect, often referred to as culling, may induce a bias...

Maternal sugar consumption in utero may have a variety of effects on offspring. We exploit the abolishment of the rationing of sweet confectionery in the UK on April 24, 1949, and its subsequent reintroduction some months later, in an era of otherwise uninterrupted rationing of confectionery...

Recent theories on fiscal decentralization support the view that sub-national governments who finance a larger share of their spending with taxes raised locally by themselves are more accountable towards their citizens. Whilst evidence on improvements in spending efficiency is relatively common,...

Along with the economic and technological developments of the past decades, obesity has become a growing public health problem. This study empirically investigates whether the large and widespread increases in body-mass index (BMI) that have been observed around the world are related to economic...

This paper analyzes the effects of a multilateral debt relief program on child health. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank launched the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative in the late 1990s to reduce the debt burdens of poor countries, and explicitly linked the initiative...

Today, the global pharmaceutical product value chain is becoming increasingly complex and this has led to the emergence of 'multiple quality standards' for medicines. But this non-uniformity in the quality of medicine is also contingent upon both the regulatory milieu in the country of...

Individuals should be entitled to a "fair innings", and the primary role of health systems should be the prevention of premature mortality. In India, 66 percent of all deaths are premature. The burden of premature mortality has shifted from child (0-5 years) to adult (30-69 years) level over the...

Estimates of the effect of fetal health shocks may suffer from survivorship bias. The fetal origins literature seemingly agrees that survivorship bias is innocuous in the sense that it induces a bias toward zero. Arguably, however, selective mortality can imply a bias away from zero. In the case...

Financial inclusion or access to financial services, is a major development goal for all nations across the globe. Financial inclusion does not concern only "access, but also the "use"" of financial services. This paper examines the loan taking behavior of individuals based on survey of 844...

Liquidity backstops have important implications for financial stability. In this paper, we provide a microfoundation for the important role of liquidity backstops in mitigating runs (or, conversely, the role of the lack of liquidity backstops in exacerbating runs) based on a dynamic model of...