The way people make decisions about future benefits - termed discounting - has important implications for both financial planning and health behaviour. Several theories assume that, when delaying gratification, the lower weight given to future benefits (the discount rate) declines exponentially....

This paper estimates the relationship between handedness and social adjustment. In addition to binary measures of hand preference, we also use a continuous measure of hand skill. Outcomes at ages 7, 11 and 16 are studied. Using a semi-parametric estimator it is shown that non-righthandedness (as...

This paper uses a new large population survey from twelve European countries to measure the association between handedness and depression. It is found that that depressive symptoms are significantly higher amongst left-handed men. While 19% of right handed men report experiencing depressive...

Kanazawa (2007) offers an explanation for the variation across countries of average intelligence. It is based on the idea human intelligence is a domain specific adaptation and that both temperature and the distance from some putative point of origin are proxies for the degree of novelty that...

I show a simple back-of-the-envelope method for calculating marginal effects in binary choice and count data models. The approach suggested here focuses attention on marginal effects at different points in the distribution of the dependent variable rather than representative points in the joint...

University tuition fees for undergraduates were abolished in Ireland in 1996. This paper examines the effect of this reform on the socioeconomic gradient (SES) to determine whether the reform was successful in achieving its objective of promoting educational equality. It finds that the reform...

This paper uses a cross-country representative sample of Europeans over the age of 50 to analyse whether individuals' height is associated with higher or lower levels of well-being. Two outcomes are used: a measure of depression symptoms reported by individuals and a categorical measure of life...