This paper presents a new data set collected on representative samples across 6 countries: China, South Korea, Japan, Italy, the UK and the four largest states in the US. The information collected relates to work and living situations, income, behavior (such as social-distancing, hand-washing...

Globally, food systems have become heavily industrialized and are currently threatening both environmental sustainability and human health. Feeding a growing world while remaining within safe social-ecological planetary boundaries, as dictated by the UN Social Development Goals and the Paris...

We characterise the distribution of expected GDP growth during the Great Influenza Pandemic (known also as Spanish Flu) using a non-linear method in a country panel setting. We show that there are non-negligible risks of large GDP losses with the 5% left tail of the distribution suggesting a...

Can students' rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian university. The rule means that in almost 30 per...

This study examines the effects of the historical prevalence of infectious diseases on contemporary entrepreneurship. Previous studies reveal the persistence of the effects of historical diseases on innovation, through the channel of culture. Drawing on the epidemiological origin of...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have struggled to find the right balance between restrictive measures to contain the spread of the virus, and the effects of these measures on people's psychological wellbeing. This paper investigates the relationship between limitations to mobility and...

I investigate the link between access to the contraceptive pill, mental health, and labor market outcomes. While liberalizing labor market effects of access to the pill are well established, a medical literature suggests a link between hormonal contraception and depression. Exploiting variation...

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is far-reaching. In this paper, we selectively review the rapidly growing literature with a focus on (1) the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market, both in terms of overall employment and in terms of work-from-home arrangements; (2) how COVID-19 may impact...

The top 12 development journals published a total of 18,329 papers during the period 2000.2020. Out of these, just 51 focused on sanitation and related issues, which are the focus of this review. Results were mixed on the efficiency of sanitation delivery since political factors and...

This paper describes changes that occurred in the Brazilian tertiary education system considering information from household surveys and from administrative data collected by the Ministry of Education. A movement toward democratizing access occurred especially in public universities and in the...