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...

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...

Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. It is thus important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit...

Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. Thus, it is important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit...

he COVID-19 pandemic calls for a collective response at the global and regional level. Otherwise, some nations may be left behind and the potential for the contagion to return remains high. As advanced regional blocs, the EU and ASEAN have a major responsibility to their members for coordinating...

In the United States, 115 people die each day due to overdose, and a third of overdoses involve the concurrent use of opioids and a class of sedatives called benzodiazepines. Facing a similar problem in 2012, Austria responded by installing public health ocers (PHOs) as third-party institutions...

This paper explores the effects of a measles outbreak on vaccination uptake in Austria, using administrative data with individual-level information on childhood vaccinations. I define a treatment group of children affected by the outbreak, and compare them with a control group of earlier-born...

This paper explores the effects of a measles outbreak on vaccination uptake in Austria, using administrative data with individual-level information on childhood vaccinations. I define a treatment group of children affected by the outbreak, and compare them with a control group of earlier-born...

Early intervention is considered the optimal response to developmental disorders in children. Any intervention presupposes the identification of affected children. Relatively little is known about the effectiveness of the standard practice of so-called developmental screenings. We evaluate a...