In this paper, I suggest a novel explanation for a hump-shaped ageconsumption profile, based on human aging. The model integrates health in the utility function and utilizes recent estimates on the effects of health on the marginal utility of consumption. The parsimonious model has a closed-form...

This study presents a new view on the association between education and longevity. In contrast to the earlier literature, which focused on inefficient health behavior of the less educated, we investigate the extent to which the education gradient can be explained by fully rational and efficient...

We analyze human aging, understood as health deficit accumulation, for a panel of European individuals. For that purpose, we use four waves of the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe (SHARE dataset) and construct a health deficit index. Results from log-linear regressions suggest...

This paper integrates into public economics a biologically founded, stochastic process of individual ageing. The novel approach enables us to quantitatively characterize the optimal joint design of health and retirement policy behind the veil of ignorance for today and in response to future...

In this paper I unify the economic theories of addiction and health deficit accumulation and develop a life cycle theory in which individuals take into account the fact that the consumption of addictive goods reduces their health and longevity. I distinguish two types of addiction: perfect and...

In this paper, I propose a life cycle model of painkiller consumption that combines the theory of health deficit accumulation with the theory of addiction. Chronic pain is conceptualized as a persistent negative shock to lifetime utility that can be treated by pain relief medication. Individuals...

We investigate how an increase in the robot intensity (the ratio of industrial robots over employment) affects the self-reported mental health of workers in Germany. To do so, we combine individual mental health data from the German Socioeconomic Panel with the deliveries of robots to 21 German...

We integrate time-inconsistent decision making due to hyperbolic discounting into a gerontologically founded life cycle model with endogenous aging and longevity. Individuals can slow down aging and postpone death by health investments and by reducing unhealthy consumption, conceptualized as...

We study biological aging of elderly U.S. Americans born 1904-1966. We use thirteen waves of the Health and Retirement Study and construct a health deficit index as the number of health deficits present in a person measured relative to the number of potential deficits. We find that, on average,...

The fetal origins hypothesis has received considerable empirical support, both within epidemiology and economics. The present study compares the ability of two rival theoretical frameworks in accounting for the kind of path dependence implied by the fetal origins hypothesis. We argue that while...