We study the effect of obesity on wages and employment, using data from the British NCDS. The results show a significant negative association between obesity and labor market outcomes even after controlling for a rich set of demographic, socioeconomic, environmental and behavioral variables....

We study the causal relation between private wealth and retirement age. We propose two estimation strategies based on expected retirement age. The outcome variable is observed repeatedly over time. We correct first for the unobserved heterogeneity in the disutility of work by using panel data...

We test whether households that face prospective home equity losses during a house price downturn use divorce to shed debt. We study the Dutch context, where qualifying homeowners can buy into a mortgage guarantee scheme that insures the lender against borrower default and transfers the risk to...

In several countries where pensions are reformed and the retirement age is increased, the issue came up to make an exception for workers with demanding occupations, since health considerations may make it unreasonable to expect them to work longer. We analyze unique Dutch survey data on the...

Family members tend to have similar labor market outcomes, but measuring the contribution of behavioral spillovers is difficult. To identify spillovers between brothers, we exploit Denmark's largest random assignment – of young men to 8 months of military service – where service status of...

Evidence suggests that hospital mergers can reduce costs but less is known about their effects on patient outcomes. We study how a wave of mergers that led to the shutdown of one third of all Swedish maternity wards affected the health of mothers who gave birth and their newborns. Applying a...

The association between stature and favorable labor market outcomes has been extensively documented. Recent studies have attributed this height premium to cognitive and social skills. We offer an alternative explanation, where the premium mainly arises from the positive association between...

In this paper, we estimate socioeconomic heterogeneity in the effect of unexpected health shocks on labor market outcomes, using register-based data on the entire population of Swedish workers. We effectively exploit a Difference-in-Difference-in-Differences design, in which we compare the...

In this paper, we focus on possible causal mechanisms behind the intergenerational transmission of human capital. For this purpose, we use both an adoption and a twin design and study the effect of parents' education on their children's cognitive skills, non-cognitive skills, and health. Our...

We provide the first twin-based estimates of the intergenerational transmission of income between fathers and sons. Using Swedish register data on the income of monozygotic twin fathers and their sons, we are able to control for unobserved endowments at the twin-pair level when estimating the...