Many studies suggest that years of formal schooling completed is the most important correlate of good health. There is much less consensus as to whether this correlation reflects causality from more schooling to better health. The relationship may be traced in part to reverse causality and may...

Large differences in fertility between women with high and low levels of education suggest that schooling may have a direct impact on knowledge and use of contraception. We investigate this issue using information on women in Mexico. In order to identify the causal effect of schooling, we...

We investigate two-way causality between health and the hourly wage by employing insights from the human capital and compensating wage differential models, a panel formed from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, and dynamic panel estimation methods in this investigation. We uncover a...

We show that tax-induced increases in alcohol prices can lead to substantial substitution and avoidance behavior that limits reductions in alcohol consumption. Causal estimates are derived from a natural experiment in Illinois where spirits and wine taxes were raised sharply and unexpectedly in...

The alcohol industry argues that alcohol excise taxes do not reduce heavy drinking because of substitutions to lower-cost products and that these taxes disproportionately burden low-income drinkers. Alternatively, some economists have argued that increases in alcohol excise taxes reduce heavy...

Comparisons of the effectiveness of two common procedures for Coronary Artery Disease: Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI) and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG). Evidence indicates that CABG - the more invasive procedure - leads to superior long term outcomes for otherwise similar...