Despite the importance of regulating working hours for workers' health and maintaining labour productivity, the literature lacks credible causal estimates on the impact of reduced working hours. We provide new evidence for the causal effect of shorter workweeks on mortality using full population...

Being indebted represents significant risks associated with global financial instability in a world where financial stability hangs precariously between debt and economic growth. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) casts a critical eye over countries navigating the perilous seas of fiscal...

We investigate how occupation influences the relationship between temperature and mortality in Mexico. Using multiple decades of nationwide death records - which include information on occupation - linked to local weather data, we find that heat-related mortality risk varies sharply by...

This paper examines the welfare consequences of reallocating high-skilled labor across borders. A labor demand shock in Norway - driven by a surge in oil prices - substantially increased physician wages and sharply raised the incentive for Swedish doctors to commute across the border. Leveraging...

Geographic disparities in mortality rates in the US are pronounced and growing. The Black-White mortality gap is volatile but persistent, while the Rich-Poor mortality gap is increasing dramatically. While the causes of these inequalities are not understood, recent attention has focused on the...

In 2013, China introduced the ambitious Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) targeting ambient fine particle (PM2.5) pollution. Using panel data covering 239 countries and territories worldwide, from 2000 to 2019, I provide quasi-experimental estimates of nationwide...

This paper examines the role of positive income shocks in helping workers adapt to extreme temperatures. We use daily temperature variations alongside the exogenous implementation of a wage and fiscal policy in Mexican municipalities along the US border to show that increased disposable income...

South Africa frequently experiences rolling blackouts ('load shedding') due to shortfalls in electricity generation. This is a common problem across the developing world, and yet the developmental impacts of insufficient and unstable electricity supply, and the benefits of mitigating this, are...

This survey sheds light on the causes and consequences of the global sanitary revolution that resulted in the spread of waterworks and sewerage projects since the middle of the 19th century, by drawing on research from the fields of economic history, economics and history. I begin with a...

The issue of equality of opportunity is crucial in contemporary society, often examined in relation to income. Previous research has demonstrated the uncertain effect of income on mortality due to the presence of other factors. To empirically assess the difference in the effect of income on...

We investigate the effects of radiation therapy on the mortality and economic outcomes of breast cancer patients. We implement a 2SLS strategy within a difference-in-difference framework exploiting variation in treatment stemming from a medical guideline change in Denmark. Using administrative...

We investigate the effects of radiation therapy on the mortality and economic outcomes of breast cancer patients.We implement a 2SLS strategy within a difference-in-difference framework exploiting variation in treatment stemming from a medical guideline change in Denmark. Using administrative...

We estimate the effect of additional pension income on mortality outcomes by exploring the eli- gibility criteria of a German program subsidizing the pensions of low-wage workers. Using novel administrative data, we find that eligibility leads to a 2-month delay in age at death (censored at 75)....

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy...

We investigate the impact of beer on mortality during the Industrial Revolution in 18th century England. Due to the brewing process, beer represented an improvement over available water sources during this period prior to the widespread understanding of the link between water quality and human...

The study of mortality is an ever-active field of research, and new methods or combinations of methods are constantly being developed. In the actuarial domain, the study of phenomena disrupting mortality and leading to excess mortality, as in the case of COVID-19, is of great interest....

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy...

This study examines the health capacity to work among older persons in Japan-that is, how much longer older persons can work based on their health status using nationwide population-based surveys. We first examine how much older persons could work if they worked as much as those with the same...

Despite a substantial literature on the links between social relationships and mortality, the size of the relative risks from loneliness, social isolation, and living alone, remain controversial. Further research is therefore important given demographic changes meaning that more people are...

We provide novel evidence about the incentive and welfare effects of an increase in the generosity of disability benefits. Importantly, a unique policy variation in Germany allows us to isolate the income effect of a change in benefit generosity. We leverage this quasi-experimental policy...

I investigate the social costs imposed by poor implementation of public infrastructure. Focusing on the period from 2005 to 2015 in Peru, when the government embarked on a nationwide initiative to expand sewerage systems, I leverage quasi-random variation in initiation of the implementation...

We examine the extent to which exposure to higher relative COVID-19 mortality (RM), influences health system trust (HST), and whether changes in HST influence the perceived ease of compliance with pandemic restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on evidence from two representative...

We examine the extent to which exposure to higher relative COVID-19 mortality (RM), influences health system trust (HST), and whether changes in HST influence the perceived ease of compliance with pandemic restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on evidence from two representative...

In some NUTS 2 (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) regions of Europe, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an increase in mortality by several dozen percent and only a few percent in others. Based on the data on 189 regions from 19 European countries, we identified factors...

Disaggregation of mortality by cause has advanced the development of life tables for life insurance and pension purposes. However, the assumption that the causes of death are independent is a challenge in reality. Furthermore, models that determine relationships among causes of death such as...

I study the impact of old-age assistance on mortality using the introduction of public pensions in the UK in 1909 as a quasi-natural experiment. Exploiting the newly created pension eligibility age through a difference-in-difference as well as an event-time design, I show that elderly mortality...

In this study, we assess COVID-19-related mortality in Minnesota and Wisconsin with the aim of demonstrating both the temporal dynamics and the magnitude of the pandemic's influence from an actuarial risk standpoint. In the initial segment of this paper, we discuss the methodology successfully...