Economists and social scientists have debated the relative importance of nature (one’s genes) and nurture (one’s environment) for decades, if not centuries. This debate can now be informed by the ready availability of genetic data in a growing number of social science datasets. This paper...

We study the formation of social and emotional skills in the first three years of life, and investigate the impact of a cluster-randomized peer-led psychosocial intervention targeting perinatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. The intervention significantly improved maternal mental health,...

We empirically analyze the labor supply choices of married men and women according to their body size (BMI), using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, and unmarried men and women as comparison group. Heavier husbands are found to work...

Economics has long studied how consumers respond to the disclosure of information about firms. We study a case in which the disclosed information is unrelated to the product or firm leadership, but which could still potentially affect consumer patronage through the mechanism of repugnance, as...

Premiums and eligibility for health insurance may cause a "marriage lock," in which couples stay married for the sake of maintaining health insurance coverage. By using the Health and Retirement Study for adults aged 60-70, I examine whether employer-based health insurance coverage for the...

This guide gives tips on how to do (quantitative) research and on how to write it up. These insights seem to hold throughout all (social) sciences. I illustrate them using examples from finance and economics. My main goal is to save budding researchers time by preventing them from doing bad...

This guide gives tips on how to do (quantitative) research and on how to write it up. These insights seem to hold throughout all (social) sciences. I illustrate them using examples from finance and economics. My main goal is to save budding researchers time by preventing them from doing bad...

We explore the proposition that expected longevity affects retirement decisions and accumulated wealth using micro data drawn from the Health and Retirement Study for the United States. We use data on a person's subjective probability of survival to age 75 as a proxy for their prospective...

We empirically analyze the labor supply choices of married men and women according to their body size (BMI), using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics on anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, and unmarried men and women as comparison group. Heavier husbands are found to work...

Many developing countries are plagued by persistent inequality in income distribution. While a growing body of economic-demographic literature emphasizes differential fertility channel, this paper investigates differential childmortality—differences in childmortality across income groups— as...