We study the effect of maternal dengue infections on birth outcomes using linked administrative records from Brazil estimating maternal fixed-effect specifications. In contrast to previous studies, we find robust evidence for the negative effect of dengue infections on birth weight (BW). The...

What are the insights from historical pandemics for policymaking today? We carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of pandemics that occurred since the Industrial Revolution and prior to Covid-19. Our literature searches were conducted between June 2020 and September 2023,...

Regarding the connection between economic development and public health, the statistically evident correlation between a country's gross domestic product and life expectancy is widely discussed. An important aspect that keeps resurfacing in discussions on why the relationship between the latter...

We propose a novel framework to analyse the macroeconomic impact of noncommunicable diseases. We incorporate measures of disease prevalence into a human capital augmented production function, which enables us to determine the economic costs of chronic health conditions in terms of foregone gross...

We study the effects of a labor-intensive health care sector within an R&D-driven growth model with overlapping generations. Health care increases longevity and labor participation/productivity. We examine under which conditions expanding health care enhances growth and welfare. Even if the...

We estimate impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention trialled in Sweden in the early 1930s using purposively digitised birth registers linked to school catalogues, census files and tax records to generate longitudinal microdata that track individuals through five stages of the...

We study how extreme temperature exposure impacts infant survival in the developing world. Our analysis overcomes the absence of vital registration systems in many poor countries, which has been a limiting factor in the temperature-mortality literature, by extracting birth histories from...

This paper investigates the potential of an infant intervention to improve life expectancy, contributing to emerging interest in the early life origins of chronic disease. We analyse a pioneering program trialled in Sweden in the 1930s, which provided information, support and monitoring of...

Complementing other efforts, the Biden Administration recently announced the purchase of 500 million rapid antigen self-tests, to help address ongoing issues with access to COVID-19 tests. A website, launched on Jan 18, 2022 (https://www.covidtests.gov) enables those wishing to receive tests to...