Early intervention is considered the optimal response to developmental disorders in children. Any intervention presupposes the identification of affected children. Relatively little is known about the effectiveness of the standard practice of so-called developmental screenings. We evaluate a...

Prior empirical research on the theoretically proposed interaction between the quantity and the quality of children builds on exogenous variation in family size due to twin births and focuses on human capital outcomes. The typical finding can be described as a statistically nonsignificant...

Healthcare payers try to reduce costs by promoting the use of cheaper generic drugs. We show strong interrelations in drug prescriptions between the inpatient and outpatient sectors by using a large administrative dataset from Austria. Patients with prior hospital visits have a significantly...

There is widespread agreement that behavior crucially influences one's health. However, little is known about what actually determines health-related behavior. We explore the impact of the place where many people spend most of their time, at work, and analyze whether an individual’s decision...

There is widespread agreement that behavior crucially influences one's health. However, little is known about what actually determines health-related behavior. We explore the impact of the place where many people spend most of their time, at work, and analyze whether an individual's decision to...

Research has shown that cognitive and non-cognitive skills, education and earnings decrease with birth order. Less is known about birth order effects on health. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between birth order, health at birth and in childhood, and parental...

Research has shown that cognitive and non-cognitive skills, education and earnings decrease with birth order. Less is known about birth order effects on health. This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between birth order, health at birth and in childhood, and parental...

In 2012, a labour market reform in Italy known as the Fornero Law substantially reduced firing restrictions for open-ended contracts in the case of firms with more than 15 employees. The results from a difference in regression discontinuities design that compares firms below versus those above...

There is agreement among health economists that on the whole medical innovation causes health care expenditures (HCE) to rise. This paper analyzes for which diagnoses and in which age groups HCE per patient have grown significantly faster than average HCE. We distinguish decedents (patients in...