This paper compares mortality between Gold and Silver medalists in Olympic Track and Field to study how achievement influences health. Contrary to conventional wisdom, winners die over one year earlier than losers. Data on pre-Olympic performances and each athlete’s career length suggest that...

We use a panel of 139 countries to examine the relationship between a country's openness to international trade and several health outcomes and find that, in general, increased openness is associated with lower rates of infant mortality and higher average life expectancies, especially in...

We develop a quantitative theory of mortality trends and population dynamics. We emphasize diseases as causes of death and individuals' decisions to reduce their mortality by adopting, at some cost, a modern health-related technology. Adoption confers a dynamic externality: Adoption becomes...

This paper produces the first large-scale estimates of the US health related welfare costs due to climate change. The full welfare impact will be reflected in health outcomes and increased consumption of goods that preserve individuals' health. Using the presumably random year-to-year variation...

Despite unprecedented health improvements in twentieth century England and Wales there have been a limited number of attempts to quantify these developments in mortality and especially morbidity. The paper provides an outline of an original methodology which was established to overcome the...

The purpose of this article is to study mortality-based securities, such as mortality bonds and swaps, and to price the proposed mortality securities. We focus on individual annuity data, although some of the modeling techniques could be applied to other lines of annuity or life insurance

Although it is well known that there is a strong association between education and health much less is known about how these factors are connected, and whether the relationship is causal. Lleras-Muney (2005) provides perhaps the strongest evidence that education has a causal effect on health....

This study uses aggregate data for 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries over the 1960-1997 period to examine the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and deaths. The main finding is that total mortality and deaths from several common causes rise when...

In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we show that approximately 50 deaths were shifted from the week before the abolition to the week after (amounting to over half of those who would have been eligible to pay the tax). Our findings suggest that the...