Exploiting Tangshan 1976 - the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century - as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate the cohort-specific effects of a historical shock on contemporary socio-economic outcomes. While cohorts born after the earthquake were considerably larger, the adverse...

Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered by the lack of a suffciently comprehensive theoretical framework to interpret empirical facts and to predict yet untested relations. We present a life-cycle model that...

The generous Nordic model of welfare is commonly viewed as an exceptional success both in terms of equality and economic growth. However, it has recently become evident that subgroups of the population with weak labour market attachment and high welfare dependency, such as lone mothers, were...

We develop a polygenic index for individual income and examine random differences in this index with lifetime outcomes in a sample of ~35,000 biological siblings. We find that genetic fortune for higher income causes greater socio-economic status and better health, partly via intervenable...

We present a theory of human capital, with its two most essential components, health capital and, what we term, skill capital, endogenously determined within the model. Using the theory, and a calibrated version of it, we uncover and highlight an important economic mechanism driving...

Two family-specific lotteries take place during conception— a social lottery that determines who our parents are and which environment we grow up in, and a genetic lottery that determines which part of their genomes our parents pass on to us. The outcomes of these lotteries create inequalities...

The COVID-19 crisis poses new policy challenges and has spurred new research agendas in public economics. In this article, we selectively reflect on how the field of public economics has been shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss several areas where more research is necessary. We highlight...

Exploiting Tangshan 1976 - the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century - as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate the long-run effect of a historical shock on contemporary socio-economic outcomes. Cohorts born after the earthquake were not only larger, but exhibit lower school completion...

In 2015, the Current Population Survey (CPS) eliminated three questions related to educational attainment. These questions are used by the NBER to calculate the variable, "Imputed Highest Grade Completed" (ihigrdc) in their Monthly Outgoing Rotation Group (MORG) extracts. Imputed Highest Grade...

Understanding of the substantial disparity in health between low and high socioeconomic status (SES) groups is hampered by the lack of a suffciently comprehensive theoretical framework to interpret empirical facts and to predict yet untested relations. We present a life-cycle model that...