To analyze the opioid epidemic, we construct a model where individuals, with and without pain, choose whether to misuse opioids knowing the probabilities of addiction and dying. These odds are functions of opioid use. Markov chains are estimated from the US data for the college and non–college...

We investigate the relationship between household debt and health outcomes for OECD countries over the period 1995 to 2012. Using a dataset of aggregated, standardized and objective measures of household debt and health outcomes, we estimate an instrumental variable (GMM) model in order to deal...

We study the impact of a COVID-19 relief program on compliance with confinement measures in Italy, the early epicenter of the pandemic. We match information on the allocation of funds across Italian municipalities with data tracking citizens' movements drawn from mobile devices and vehicles'...

Background: This paper contributes to the evidence-base on prices and alcohol use by presenting meta-analytic summaries of price and income elasticities for alcohol beverages. The analysis improves on previous meta-analyses by correcting for outliers and publication bias.Methods: Adjusting for...

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused large changes in consumer spending, including how people make their payments. We use data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. consumers collected before COVID in 2018 and 2019 and during COVID in 2020 to analyze changes in consumer payment behavior...

We study the differences of currency misalignment estimates obtained from alternative datasets derived from two International Comparison Program (ICP) surveys. A decomposition exercise reveals that the year 2005 misalignment estimates are substantially affected by the ICP price revision....

The paper explores the linkages between political risk, institutions and foreign direct investment inflows. Using different econometric techniques for a data sample of 83 developing countries and the period 1984 to 2003, we identify those indicators that matter most for the activities of...

Many believe that multinational enterprises insensitively ignore political rights and civil liberties in the countries of their investments. Frequently, non-governmental organisations accuse multinationals of fostering repressive regimes in developing countries and consider foreign direct...

In this work we update the reviews on endogenous growth theories, after two decades of theoretical and empirical contributions in order to explore whether recent empirical studies have become more supportive of their main predictions. Among the core topics studied in the growth econometric...

In this work the author updates the reviews on endogenous growth theories in order to explore whether recent empirical studies have become more supportive of their main predictions. Among the core topics studied in the growth econometric framework, namely convergence, identification of growth...