We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables, using the example of age-specific mortality in the United States, building on the LeeCarter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables...

We analyze the impact of short-run economic fluctuations on age-specific mortality using Bayesian time series econometrics and contribute to the debate on the procyclicality of mortality. For the first time, we examine the differing consequences of economic changes for all individual age...

Prior empirical research on the theoretically proposed interaction between the quantity and the quality of children builds on exogenous variation in family size due to twin births and focuses on human capital outcomes. The typical finding can be described as a statistically nonsignificant...

Objective: To analyze health disparities in pediatric HEDIS quality of care measures and to determine how imputation has an impact on these disparities. Data Sources: Five HEDIS measures are calculated based on 2012 administrative data for 145,652 children in two public insurance programs in...

We present a new way to model age-specific demographic variables with the example of age-specific mortality in the U.S., building on the Lee-Carter approach and extending it in several dimensions. We incorporate covariates and model their dynamics jointly with the latent variables underlying...

Subjective health expectations are derived using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS). We first use a Bayesian updating mechanism to correct for focal point responses and reporting errors of the original health expectations variable. We then test the quality of the health expectations...

Medical treatment requires informed consent, which in turn requires decision making capacity. When a patient with questionable capacity does not resist treatment, these requirements are often neglected: treatment is administered with no assessment of capacity and no consideration of alternative...

This paper aims to identify the causal effect of smoking on body weight using data from the Lung Health Study, a randomized trial of smoking cessation treatments. We find evidence that quitting smoking leads to an average long-run weight gain of around 11-12 pounds, and that the drop in smoking...