Germany’s healthcare system is praised as one of the best in the world. In this article, we review Germany’s health system by critically analysing its structure, funding, resource allocation, provider payments, efficiency, health outcomes, and access. Whilst health provision and access are...

Sudden economic shocks impact the everyday lives of people from one day to the next. A number of studies have examined the association between economic fluctuations and health, however, no consensus on the nature of this relationship has been established. By exploiting the dramatic economic...

On 3 June 2020, the German government announced a EUR 130 billion fiscal stimulus package to stimulate market demand and jumpstart the economy in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in the spring of 2020. The most prominent measure of this package is an unconventional fiscal policy in the...

Florian Dorn prepared this study during his doctoral studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich (LMU). The study was completed in September 2020 and accepted as doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics. This dissertation contributes to the empirics of public economics and...

We merge several historical data sets from Germany to show that influenza mortality in 1918-1920 is correlated with societal changes, as measured by municipal spending and city-level extremist voting, in the subsequent decade. First, influenza deaths are associated with lower per capita...

Do pandemics have lasting consequences for political behavior? We address this question by examining the consequences of the most deadly pandemic of the last millennium: the Black Death (1347-1351). Our claim is that pandemics can influence politics in the long run if they impose sufficient loss...

Based on the German Socio-Economic Panel, the influence of the body mass index on health, earnings and satisfaction is analysed by gender. Basic results are: health worsens, income declines and satisfaction is poorer with higher body mass index. If control variables are added, estimates are...

This paper develops a conceptual framework that can explain why economic development goes along with increases in body weight and obesity rates. We first introduce the concept of novelty consumption, which refers to an increase in food availability due to trade or innovation. Then we study how...

Two of the most important health risk factors for children and young adults are obesity and alcohol use. These risk factors are known to affect health and wellbeing, but may also have an impact on educational outcomes. The objective of this study was to assess a potential causal relationship...

Based on the German Socio-Economic Panel, the influence of the body mass index on health, earnings and satisfaction is analysed by gender. Basic results are: health worsens, income declines and satisfaction is poorer with higher body mass index. If control variables are added, estimates are...