This paper investigates whether the consumption of rich households provides a reference point in the consumption choices of non-rich households from an intertemporal perspective. Using UK household data on food consumption, we estimate the Euler equation implied by a life-cycle model...

We survey samples of German firms and households to document novel stylized facts about the extent of information frictions among the two groups. First, firms' expectations about macroeconomic variables are closer to expert forecasts and less dispersed than households', consistent with higher...

We develop a matching model on the marriage market, where individuals have preferences over the smoking status of potential mates, and over their socioeconomic quality. Spousal smoking is bad for non-smokers, but it is neutral for smokers, while individuals always prefer high socioeconomic...

Argentina hit headlines around the world in 2002 on account of the largest debt default in history and a sudden economic collapse that generated statistics reminiscent of those from the Great Depression. In this article we focus on other consequences of the crisis that are not so obvious but...

We design an infrastructure experiment in Mexico to evaluate the impact of street pavement on housing values and household outcomes. We find that the provision of street pavement raises housing values by 16% and land values by 54%, according to professional appraisals. Using homeowner...

We analyze the interaction of race with physical and socioeconomic characteristics in the U.S. marriage market, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1999 to 2009 for black, white, and inter-racial couples. We consider the anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, together with...

We analyze how attractiveness rated at the start of the interview is related to weight (controlling for height), and BMI, separately by gender and also accounting for interviewer fixed effects, in a nationally representative sample. We are the first to show that height, weight, and BMI all...

We study the effects of terrorism in Spain on birth outcomes, focusing on terrorism perpetrated by ETA, combining information on the number of bomb casualties from The Victims of ETA Dataset with the individual birth records from the national registry of live births in Spain, elaborated by the...

This study employs six Machine Learning methods - Logit, Lasso-Logit, Ridge-Logit, Random Forest, Extreme Gradient Boosting, and an Ensemble - alongside registry data on abortions in Spain from 2011-2019 to predict multiple abortions and assess monetary savings through targeted interventions. We...

We study the determinants of season of birth of the first child, for white married women aged 25-45 in the US, using birth certificate and Census data. We also analyze stated preferences for season of birth using our own Amazon Mechanical Turk survey. The prevalence of quarters 2 and 3 is...