This paper investigates the importance of the age composition for pandemic policy design. To do so, it introduces an economic framework with age heterogeneity, individual choice, and incomplete information, emphasizing the value of testing. Calibrating the model to the US Covid-19 pandemic...

Diagnostic and contact tracing apps are an important weapon against contagion during a pandemic. We study how the content of the messages used to promote the apps influences adoption by conducting a survey experiment on approximately 23,000 Mexican adults. Respondents were randomly assigned to...

This paper attempts to identify the climatic effect on birth outcomes in Brazil and, thus, to predict the potential impact of climate change. Panel data models indicate that excess and lack of rainfall have the most important harmful effects on newborns' health; temperature stresses and low...

This paper uses data from the Global School-based Student Health Survey to investigate the prevalence of health risk behaviors, in particular substance use, risky sexual behavior, and violence among adolescents in 15 Latin American and Caribbean countries. Using logit regressions and...

We implement a mixed method approach that combines a randomized controlled trial and qualitative data collection to assess whether, and if so how, behavioural change can be sustained. We do so in the context of Pakistan’s national sanitation strategy to combat open defecation, Community-Led...

While effective preventive measures against COVID-19 are now widely known, many individuals fail to adopt them. This paper provides experimental evidence about one potentially important driver of compliance with social distancing: social norms. We asked each of 23,000 survey respondents in...

In this paper, we test whether promoting digital government tools increases the take-up of an important public health prevention service: cervical cancer screening. We implemented an at-scale field experiment in Uruguay, randomly encouraging women to make medical appointments with a digital...

In response to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, national governments have implemented a range of mitigation measures designed to limit the transmission of the novel virus. In order to estimate the effects of these "non-pharmaceutical" policies, one needs to properly account for...

Maintaining high standards of care from doctors, nurses and other health professionals is of critical importance for an effective and efficient health system. Yet deficient levels of health worker performance, including low effort, absenteeism, and lack of compliance with clinical guidelines,...

This study investigates the effectiveness of dynamic norm nudges in promoting second-dose HPV vaccinations among trendsetters-parents who initiated the firstdose HPV vaccine for their daughters between 2017-2020. Utilizing administrative data from Bogota's Secretariat of Health in a field...