There is a growing literature showing the relationship between health and economic status, though little research has focused on distinguishing between the effects for men and women. I use measures of exogenous health “shocks” to identify the different channels through which changes in...

The search for talent is of particular interest to economists; in fact, nothing unites academic economists' interest like speculation about the causes of two key measures of success in their profession: completion of the doctorate and success in publishing. We assess both outcomes by using a...

This paper examines the relationship between admission status and college performance. In particular, we analyze admissions data from Hamilton College and find that students who applied through the Early Decision Plan II program have significantly lower GPAs and are less likely to receive...

We examine the impact of fatalism, the belief that one has little or no control over future events, on the decision of whether or not to save. We develop a model that predicts that fatalism decreases savings for moderately risk averse individuals, increases savings for highly risk averse...

This is the first paper to formally analyze character discrimination in the specific labor market for professional athletes. We observe all 1,273 players drafted into the National Football League between 2005-2009 to determine what effects character concerns, namely arrest records and team...

This paper examines the influence of community characteristics on self-proclaimed environmentalism. We find that the composition of a community affects the likelihood that a person claims to be a strong environmentalist, even after controlling for individual characteristics and pro-environment...

This paper analyzes the role that health status plays in household portfolio decisions using data from the Health and Retirement Study. The results indicate that health is a significant predictor of both the probability of owning different types of financial assets and the share of financial...

This paper surveys the literature on the relationship between health and household portfolio allocation and provides updated empirical analysis based on recent data. Prior research finds robust evidence for cross-sectional correlations between measures of health status and portfolio decisions,...