This paper evaluates the effects of a professionally assisted consumer-directed program (Personal Budgets) compared to the standard home care programs of the German long-term care insurance. The evaluation makes use of a long-run social experiment at seven different sites with a random...

In a long-run social experiment, personal budgets have been tested as an alternative to the home care programs of the German long-term care insurance (LTCI). Due to extending the coverage beyond LTCI approved services and agencies, personal budgets may improve care outcomes compared to the...

This paper examines the long-term impacts on health and healthy behaviors of two of the oldest and most widely cited U.S. early childhood interventions evaluated by the method of randomization with long-term follow-up: the Perry Preschool Project (PPP) and the Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC)....

The classical Heckman (1976, 1979) selection correction estimator (heckit) is misspecified and inconsistent if an interaction of the outcome variable and an explanatory variable matters for selection. To address this specification problem, a full information maximum likelihood estimator and a...

This paper presents a World Bank led and Russia trust fund financed work program to measure financial capability and the effectiveness of financial education in low and middle income countries. The two activities and their staging have been motivated by the lessons of high-income countries with...

We evaluate the effects of different marketing and distribution techniques on the purchase of Long-Lasting Insecticide-Treated Nets (LL-ITN). Using a randomized controlled trial in urban Senegal, we look at the impacts of receiving information on malaria-related issues and of different sale...

Mindfulness could influence economic and health related behaviour by bringing about increased and unbiased attention to the present moment, for example to a decision making process. This study explores the relationship between mindfulness and economic preferences, and consequently well-being, of...

The long run price elasticity of healthcare spending is critically important to estimating the cost of provision. However, temporary randomized controlled trials may be confounded by transitory effects. This paper shows evidence of a "deadline effect" - a spike in spending in the final year of...

This paper investigates whether encouraging children to become more physically active in their everyday life affects their primary school performance. We use data from a field quasi-experiment called the Active Living Program, which aimed to increase active modes of transportation to school and...

This paper examines weight loss and the formation of healthy habits through cash rewards in the context of a multi-phase randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese individuals. We find effects of monetary incentives for weight loss of up to EUR 300 on body weight during all experimental...