Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

Risky health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, unprotected sex, and poor diets and sedentary lifestyles (leading to obesity) are a major source of preventable deaths. This chapter overviews the theoretical frameworks for, and empirical evidence on, the economics of risky...

The COVID crisis has severely hit both the United States and the European Union. Even though they are the wealthiest regions in the world, they differ substantially in economic performance, demographic characteristics, type of government, health systems, and measures undertaken to counteract...

Medical and public health innovations in the 1940s quickly resulted in significant health improvements around the world. Countries with initially higher mortality from infectious diseases experienced greater increases in life expectancy, population, and -- over the following 40 years -- social...

This is a rejoinder to a comment by Profs. Cutler and Miller (CM) on a recent paper of ours, “Public Health Efforts and the Decline in Urban Mortality” (NBER WP No. 25027), in which we examine the effect of water filtration on infant and total mortality using the same data as were used by CM...

Exploiting a 1960s government trial in Copenhagen, we study the long-run and inter-generational effects of preventive care for toddlers. We combine administrative data with handwritten nurse records to document universal treatment take-up and positive health effects for treated children over the...

Motivated by the complicated control issues of COVID-19, this article aims at investigating the optimal control of an epidemic of a Susceptible-Infective-Removed-Susceptible (SIRS) infection, where social distancing is the only control action in a first stage, whereas a combination of social...

The response of governments to the COVID-19 outbreak was foremost oriented to two objectives: saving lives and limiting economic losses. However, the effectiveness and success factors of interventions were unknown ex-ante. This study aims to shed light on the drivers of countries' performances...

Mit dem vorliegenden Gutachten folgt der Sachverständigenrat unmittelbar dem gesetzlichen Auftrag, Über-, Unter- und Fehlversorgung im Gesundheitswesen aufzuzeigen und Möglichkeiten zur Ausschöpfung von Rationalisierungspotentialen vorzuschlagen. Eine zielorientierte Gesundheitsversorgung...