It is well known that smoking causes severe adverse health effects, and it seems evident that governments are justified or even obliged to implement measures of tobacco control to mitigate these effects. Yet, as this paper argues with a distinct focus on Germany, the three most important and...

This paper analyses the compensatory behavior of smokers. Exploiting data on cotinine concentration a metabolite of nicotine measured in a large population of smokers over time, we show that smokers compensate tax hikes by extracting more nicotine per cigarette. Our study makes two important...

This study is the first to estimate the price elasticities of demand for both medical rehabilitation programs and treatment at health spas. In Germany, the Statutory Health Insurance (SHI) covers both forms of therapy if administered in authorized medical facilities on referral from a physician....

Family Rewards represents the first test of a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program in the U.S., offering families incentives for children's education, family preventive health care and parents' work and training. Using a randomized controlled trial, we find that the program led to substantial...

This paper identifies and estimates the impact of early retirement on the probability to die within five years, using administrative micro panel data covering the entire population of the Netherlands. Among the older workers we focus on, a group of civil servants became eligible for retirement...

The minimum wage has increased in multiple states over the past three decades. Research has focused on effects on labor supply, but very little is known about how the minimum wage affects health, including children's health. We address this knowledge gap and provide an investigation focused on...

Given the wide use of childcare subsidies across countries, it is surprising how little we know about the effect of these subsidies on children's longer run outcomes. Using a sharp discontinuity in the price of childcare in Norway, we are able to isolate the effects of childcare subsidies on...

This study uses the 2007 and 2013 Annual Social and Economic Supplement of the Current Population Survey to examine the effect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on health insurance coverage among adults in the U.S. It finds that the ACA has improved coverage for men, youth, minorities, and...

We applied the SIR-macro model proposed by Eichenbaum et al. (2020) in its complete version to comparatively study the interaction between economic decisions and COVID-19 epidemics in five different Brazilian states: São Paulo (SP), Amazonas (AM), Ceará (CE), Rio de Janeiro (RJ), and...

This paper assesses the quantitative impact of government interventions on deaths related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Using daily data for 32 countries and relying on the stringency of the conducted policies, we find that the greater the strength of government interventions at an early stage, the...