Accurate counts of cases and deaths are critical for devising an optimal pandemic response. Yet, as the COVID-19 pandemic has progressed, so too has the recognition that cases and deaths have been underreported, perhaps vastly so. Here, we present an econometric strategy to estimate the true...

Happiness levels (states) are volatile and often fluctuate between a happy and unhappy state from one day to the next. The reasons for these shifts are mostly unobservable and not predictable. In this paper, we fit a Marko Switching Dynamic Regression Model (MSDR) to better understand the...

In this brief, we provide a back-of-the-envelope estimate of the impact of current mitigation measures on the 2020 GDP growth rate. That impact varies by industry, and we are able to identify this variation by adopting a simple but plausible assumption: industries will remain in business in...

Employing the panel data from 2001, 2003, and 2005 from 27 OECD countries, regression results suggest that income and a set of three indicators of health (that is, lung cancer mortality, mortality due to 14 kinds of cancers, and healthy life expectancy) are found to be related, thus implying...

This paper examines the efficiency of the German hospital sector over time and the relative efficiency of public, welfare (both nonprofit) and private (for-profit) hospital sectors using data from the Federal Statistics Office of German hospitals. Efficiency scores were computed using Data...

The purpose of this study is to analyse the determinants of life expectancy as proxy for health status of the OECD countries' population. A production function of health is used to explain expectancy life at birth for total and ageing population and according to gender. Socio-economic factors,...

Unwanted pregnancy represents a major cost of sexual activity. When abortion was legalized in a number of states in 1969 and 1970 (and nationally in 1973), this cost was reduced. We predict that abortion legalization generated incentives leading to an increase in sexual activity, accompanied by...

To what extent do mass media outlets influence viewers' trust in scientific evidence and compliance with behavior recommended by scientific experts? Exploiting the US lock-down period of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, we analyze a large longitudinal database that combines daily...

We provide a framework to disentangle preferences and beliefs in health behavior and apply it to lockdown compliance in the UK. We estimate a model of compliance choice with uncertain costs and benefits to quantify utility tradeoffs, decompose group differences in compliance, and compute...

We provide a framework to disentangle the role of preferences and beliefs in health behavior, and we apply it to compliance behavior during the acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using rich data on subjective expectations collected during the spring 2020 lockdown in the UK, we estimate a...