Twelve percent of the Malawian population is HIV infected. Eighteen percent of sexual encounters are casual. A condom is used a third of the time. To analyze the Malawian epidemic, a choice-theoretic general equilibrium search model is constructed. In the developed framework, people select...

Implementation of evidence-based interventions to control obesity is regarded as a public health priority. In this working paper, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness evidence of sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes, nutrition labeling, advertising bans on unhealthy food, and school-based...

A large body of research documents the importance of early life conditions for the health and human capital formation of children. The detrimental effects of alcohol exposure in utero are well documented, and therefore identifying effective methods for preventing harmful maternal alcohol...

This project re-investigates the hookworm eradication efforts of the Rockefeller Foundation's Sanitary Commission (RSC) in the American South during the Progressive Era. The RSC worked to eradicate hookworm across 11 southern states between 1911 and 1915, efforts that have been linked to...

France’s health-care system offers high-quality care. Average health outcomes are good, public satisfaction with the health-care system is high, and average household out-of-pocket expenditures are low. As in other OECD countries, technology is expanding possibilities for life extension and...

Bleakley (2010) finds that large-scale campaigns in the 20th century to eradicate malaria were followed by income gains for those native to historically endemic areas. I perform a pre-registered reanalysis and find these results to be largely robust. Malaria eradication efforts indeed appear to...

This paper explores the effects of a measles outbreak on vaccination uptake in Austria, using administrative data with individual-level information on childhood vaccinations. I define a treatment group of children affected by the outbreak, and compare them with a control group of earlier-born...

We evaluate the impact of government-mandated proof of vaccination requirements for access to public venues and non-essential businesses on COVID-19 vaccine uptake. We find that the announcement of a mandate is associated with a rapid and significant surge in new vaccinations (more than 60%...

Fighting infectious disease in the past, much like today, focused on isolating the disease and thereby stopping its spread. New insights into the modes of transmission and the causal agents in the mid-nineteenth century, together with fear of new epidemic outbreaks, motivated public investments...