I demonstrate how scientific models of pollution processes can be leveraged in quasi-experimental econometric designs to credibly estimate the impacts of environmental quality on health or other outcomes while also improving precision and external validity over previous approaches. I simulate...

Excessive alcohol consumption among young people is a major public health concern. On March 1, 2010, the German state of Baden-Württemberg banned the sale of alcoholic beverages between 10pm and 5am at off-premise outlets (e.g., gas stations, kiosks, supermarkets). We use rich monthly...

In this paper, we measure the impact of a number of information providers on youth smoking. Using French epidemiological data on the health and lifestyles of teenagers in secondary schools, we estimate a Box-Cox double-hurdle model of tobacco consumption, where the information variables are...

We reexamine the mechanism of prospective reimbursement when the regulator does not observe hospitals? cost characteristics, which can depend on exogenous variables and idiosyncratic shocks. In this framework, we formally develop the "reduced-form" of yardstick competition, which allows the...

In this article, we study the optimal level of prevention in the face of an uncertainty on the health status. We analyze the individual choices of primary prevention and secondary prevention when the probability of appearance of the disease is not perfectly known. In order to distinguish the...

This paper uses the rollout of the first Community Health Centers (CHCs) to study the longer-term health effects of increasing access to primary care. Within ten years, CHCs are associated with a reduction in age-adjusted mortality rates of 2 percent among those 50 and older. The implied 7 to 13...

Indirect psychological effects induced by crime are likely to contribute significantly to the total costs of crime beyond the financial costs of direct victimization. Using detailed crime statistics for the whole of Germany and linking them to individual-level mental health information from the...

This paper uses an audit sample and a consumer survey to study the intriguing market of online prescription drugs facing US customers, and assesses the role that certification agencies play in online drug markets. On the supply side, we acquire samples of five popular brand-name prescription...

We study the effect of a compulsory education reform in Sweden on adult health and mortality. The reform was implemented by municipalities between 1949 and 1962 as a social experiment and implied an extension of compulsory schooling from 7 or 8 years depending on municipality to 9 years...

In this paper we study the efficient allocation of health resources across individuals. We focus on the relation between health resources and income (taken as a proxy for productivity). In particular we determine the efficient level of the health care social safety net for the indigent. We...