In this paper we analyse data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 to investigate whether experiencing parental divorce during adolescence reduces measured cognitive ability. To account for the potential endogeneity of parental divorce we employ a difference-in-differences...

Obesity is not only a health but also an economic phenomenon with potentially important direct and indirect economic costs that are unlikely to be fully internalized by the obese. In the US, obesity prevalence is the highest among OECD countries and the issue has long been the focus of policy...

We provide comparable evidence on the patterns and trends in obesity across the Atlantic and analyse whether there are economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. We take into account equity issues as well as efficiency considerations, which are organized around three...

The authors provide comparable evidence on the patterns and trends in obesity across the Atlantic and analyze whether there are economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. They take into account equity issues as well as efficiency considerations, which are organized around...

Using data from the US Health and Retirement Study, we study the causal effect of increased health insurance coverage through Medicare and the associated reduction in health-related background risk on financial risk-taking. Given the onset of Medicare at age 65, we identify our effect of...

This study evaluates whether the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which was signed into law in 1996, succeeded in mitigating job-lock, defined as reduced mobility out of jobs that offer health insurance. An analysis that uses quarterly data from the 1996 Survey of...

type="main" xml:lang="en" <title type="main">Abstract</title> <p>We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find suggestive evidence of same-sex role models in two-parent households: mothers play a more crucial...</p>

We present evidence on the frequency of nominal wage adjustment using SIPP data adjusted for measurement error. The SIPP is a representative sample of the US population. Our main results are: (i) The average quarterly probability of a nominal wage change is between 21.1 and 26.6 percent,...

We study the causal impact of the minimum wage on employment and welfare in Thailand using a difference-in-difference approach that relies on exogenous policy variation in minimum wages across provinces. We find that minimum-wage increases have small disemployment effects on female, elderly, and...

We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find evidence of same-sex role models in two-parent households: mothers play a crucial role in determining their daughters' smoking...