During Typhoon Morakot which hit Taiwan from 6 to 9 August, 2009, Kaohsiung City was highly affected by devastating debris-flows and flooding. Recorded casualties were 699 deaths and 1,766 damaged homes, mostly in the mountainous areas of Kaohsiung City. Due to a largely malfunctioning or absent...

Economists and policy makers increasingly consult national household surveys asking individuals about their economic circumstances, financial decisions, and expectations for the future. For decades, the Reuters/Michigan Survey of Consumers and other national surveys have asked about expectations...

The German health care reform of 2004 imposes a charge of 10 Euro for the first visit to a doctor in each quarter of the year. Exploiting random variation in the interview day of the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study finds a substantial effect of the new fee on the probability of visiting...

Public expectations and perceptions of inflation may affect economic decisions, and have subsequent effects on actual inflation. The Michigan Survey of Consumers uses questions about 'prices in general' to measure expected and perceived inflation. Median responses track official measure of...

The share of immobile persons, i.e. persons not leaving their homes on a given reporting day, is both a central result and a prime quality indicator of a travel diary survey. The wide range of values for the share of immobiles reported in travel diary and time budget survey literature has...

Recent validation studies show that survey misreporting is pervasive and biases common analyses. Addressing this problem is further complicated, because validation data are usually convenience samples and access is restricted, making them more suitable to document than to solve the problem. I...