The internet has become an important data source for the Social Sciences because these data are available without lags, can be regarded as involuntary surveys and hence have no observer effect, can be geo-labeled, are available for countries across the globe and can be viewed in continuous time...

For those looking to design policies that mitigate the deleterious consequences of alcohol abuse, understanding how consumer demand for alcohol responds to changes in the local economic conditions is of great importance. We use high-frequency purchase data from a large panel of U.S. households...

We leverage spatial variation in the severity of the Great Recession across the United States to examine its impact on mortality and to explore implications for the welfare consequences of recessions. We estimate that an increase in the unemployment rate of the magnitude of the Great Recession...

A significant literature has documented trend increases in pain among Americans over the last two or three decades. There is no single explanation seeming to work well for the increase. We show that, rather than resulting from a smooth upward trend, the increase was almost entirely concentrated...

The internet has become an important data source for the Social Sciences because these data are available without lags, can be regarded as involuntary surveys and hence have no observer effect, can be geo-labeled, are available for countries across the globe and can be viewed in continuous time...

Food supply and demand chains are highly sensitive to global shocks. Unstable and sudden food price hikes cause serious malnutrition problems and increase the number of food-insecure people, especially in developing countries. Using FAO Food Price Index (FFPI), this study makes one of the first...

This paper studies the impact of financial crises on society. Using data on 187 banking crises in 126 countries over the period 1970-2009, I examine the impact of a crisis not only on the economy and the financial sector, but also on health, education, poverty, and gender issues. A wider-angle...