This note defines and analyzes the most important issues concerning decisionmaking about human-induced insecurities such as terrorism and organized crime from the perspective of a policymaker. By means of modeling the policymakers trade-o_ between the e_ectiveness and costs of policy measures...

According to basic models of sequential private value auctions of identical objects, consecutive prices are on average constant or rising. In empirical studies, prices are often found to decline. Several explanations have been put forward for this declining price anomaly. In this paper we...

A bi-directional relationship between poverty and mental health may create a vicious cycle, wherein economic hardship and psychological distress reinforce each other. We examine the short-term dynamics between income fluctuations and mental well-being using 17 months of weekly financial diaries...

Using a panel dataset of 320 Indonesian districts we examine the impact of district budgets on public health spending, utilization patters in the public and private sector, and private health spending in the four years after decentralization. We exploit the panel structure of the data and the...

Every three years, Indonesia fields simultaneously two nationwide surveys which collect consumption data. Onecollects consumption using 23 questions, the other using 320 questions. Based on a repeated experiment inwhich the two questionnaires were randomly assigned across households, I examine...

This study explores global inequality in health status, and decomposes it into within- andbetween-country inequality. We rely on standardized height indicators as our health indicator sincethey avoid the measurement pitfalls of more traditional measures of health such as morbidity,mortality and...

Public action to prevent crime is often driven by concerns about public safety. But what generatesthose concerns ? ]s it crime, or something else ? Using survey data for Brazil, we find that thedesire for greater public safety has a positive own-income effect, but a negative neighborhood-income...

The Indonesian Healthcard program was implemented in response to the economiccrisis, which hit Indonesia in 1998, in order to preserve access to health care servicesfor the poor. The Healthcard provided the households with subsidised care at publichealth care providers, while the providers...

We evaluate, using a randomized trial, two school-based financial literacy education programs in government-run primary and junior high schools in Ghana. One program integrated financial and social education, whereas the second program only offered financial education. Both programs included a...

We evaluate, using a randomized trial, two school-based financial literacy education programs in government-run primary and junior high schools in Ghana. One program integrated financial and social education, whereas the second program only offered financial education. Both programs included a...