In this paper we show that optimistic financial expectations impact positively on both the uantity of debt and the growth in debt, at the individual and household levels. Our heoretical model shows that this association is predicted under a variety of plausible cenarios. In the empirical...

Most immigrant groups in the UK experience higher unemployment rates than otherwise similar UK born whites. Empirical research to date has attributed this finding to discrimination, lack of English Language fluency and the (non-) transferability of skills acquired before immigration. In this...

In this paper we investigate if there was a causal effect of changes in current and 'permanent' income on the health of East Germans in the years following reunification. Reunification was completely unanticipated and therefore can be seen as providing some exogenous variation, which resulted in...

The socio-economic gradient in health remains a controversial topic in economics and other social sciences. In this paper we develop a new duration model that allows for unobserved persistent individual-specific health shocks and provides new evidence on the roles of socio-economic...