We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in...

We investigate the prevalence of factors associated with participation in the sex market among men resident in Britain using data from Britain's National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-2, 199-2001,Natsal-3, 2010-2012). The percentage of men asking for paid sex is about 12 per...

This paper investigates the increasing exposure of European households to risky financial assets and the consequent impact on the economy. I analyze household data for Italy and the United Kingdom, countries that differ dramatically in their financial structure and capital markets. I estimate an...

Traditional hedonic estimation approaches are known to be biased when exogenous shocks affect multiple product attributes, the market for the product's complements and substitutes, and aggregate quantity produced. Our research develops a more general hedonic model to recover the marginal...

This paper establishes the following: Random Utility Models (RUMs) that assume consistent preferences result in inconsistent and therefore irrational choice behavior. Paradoxically, it is possible to create RUMs that result in consistent choice behavior, but these models assume inconsistent...

Households are forward-looking when deciding whether to default on or refinance their mortgages. There are two types of default generated by two mechanisms: illiquidity-triggered default and strategic default. However, researchers can observe only whether households default but not whether the...

This paper explores the religious behavior of the inhabitants of Bucaramanga from the analytical perspective known as economics of religion. By considering religious practice as a rational choice made by individuals, we analyze beliefs, the level of prayer, and the frequency of church...

Standard choice models used to optimize product line prices are effective at capturing the effects of prices on the affordability of products but do not incorporate intraline price spillovers, or the effects of prices on consumer preferences for branded product lines. To date, no approach exists...

Exploiting French survey data, we empirically ascertain whether earnings uncertainty and borrowing constraints decrease households demand for risky assets, consistent with theoretical predictions. A major empirical problem is the potential endogeneity bias of income risk, as more risk averse...

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate, via an empirical example, how to obtain point estimates of price elasticities for differentiated products using a single cross section of product level data. Bajari and Benkard (2005) use revealed-preference bounds for the taste coefficients. In order to...