The value of a statistical life (VSL) is a key parameter in the analysis of government policy. Most policy decisions are made under ambiguity. This paper studies the effect of changes in ambiguity perception on the value of a statistical life (VSL). We propose a definition of increases in...

Using data on 25 major American cities for the period 1900-1940, we explore the effects of municipal-level public health efforts that were viewed as critical in the fight against food- and water-borne diseases. In addition to studying interventions such as treating sewage and setting strict...

The determination of death in the United States can have strong financial implications. For example, a declaration of suicide can nullify life insurance benefits. However, the intent of death may be made by an elected official who is not required to have any medical training. Medical examiners...

This is a rejoinder to a comment written by Cutler and Miller on our recent paper, "Public Health Efforts and the Decline in Urban Mortality" (IZA DP No. 11773), which reanalyzes data used by Cutler and Miller to investigate the determinants of the urban mortality decline from 1900 to 1936. Two...

I jointly use daily data on deaths and public transportation ridership in San Francisco in 1918-19 to estimate a model in which agents choose their level of economic activity based on perceived infection risk, modeled as a function of current and lagged infections or deaths. Agents' choices in...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, among other previous "non-pharmaceutical interventions'', on March 22, 2020 the Italian Government imposed an economic lockdown and ordered the closing of all non-essential economic activities. This paper estimates the causal effect of this measure on...

Governments around the world have adopted unprecedented policies to deal with COVID-19. This paper zooms in on business shutdowns and investigates their effectiveness in reducing mortality. We leverage upon highly granular death registry data for over 4,000 Italian municipalities in a...

As of the end of 2017, 3.4 million Syrian refugees lived in Turkey. These refugees left a country where the health system was completely broken. Several studies report that Syrian refugees faced numerous diseases during their exodus, brought certain infectious diseases to the hosting...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of COVID-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...