Under asymmetric information about sexual history, sexual activity creates externalities. Abstinence by those with few partners perversely increases the average probability of HIV infection in the pool of available partners. Since this increases prevalence among the high activity people who...

We examine the effects of malaria on educational attainment by exploiting geographic variation in malaria prevalence in India prior to a nationwide eradication program in the 1950s. Malaria eradication resulted in gains in literacy and primary school completion rates of approximately 12...

Under asymmetric information about sexual history, sexual activity creates externalities. Abstinence by those with few partners perversely increases the average probability of HIV infection in the pool of available partners. Since this increases prevalence among the high activity people who...

Vaccines exert a positive externality, reducing spread of disease from the consumer to others, providing a rationale for subsidies. We study how optimal subsidies vary with disease characteristics by integrating a standard epidemiological model into a vaccine market with rational economic...