This paper examines the role of various socioeconomic factors in mediating the local and cross-city transmissions of the novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) in China. We implement a machine learning approach to select instrumental variables that strongly predict virus transmission among the rich...

What is the role of government policies in encouraging healthier food choices to fight the current overweight and obesity epidemics? This report briefly examines the evidence base on unhealthy diets, including the associated burden on health systems. It then takes stock of current knowledge on...

We provide the first quasi-experimental evidence on the relationship between cigarette taxes and sexual minority adult smoking by studying individuals in same-sex households (a large share of whom are in same-sex romantic relationships) from the 1996-2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance...

The Recovery Fund recently proposed by the EU Commission marks a sea-change in European integration. Yet it will not be enough to meet the challenges Europe faces. There has been much public debate about financing, but little about the sort of concrete projects that the EU should be putting...

Lack of information about health risks may limit adoption of improved nutritional and healthy behavior. This paper studies the effect of nutrition information intervention on household dietary behavior, child health, and cognitive ability of children in rural India. Using experimental data and...

In order to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control, most governments around the globe have adopted some sort of containment policies. In the light of the enormous costs of these policies, in many countries highly controversial discussions on the adequacy of the chosen policies evolved. We...

Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of infectious disease, but it creates enormous economic and social cost. Thus, it is important to quantify the benefits of different measures. We study the ban of mass gatherings, an intervention with comparably low cost. We exploit...

Substantial weaknesses in the preparation by public health authorities and governments increased the health and economic costs of the Covid-19 pandemic relative to what they would have been if pre-existing recommendations had been followed and a wider set of plans had been put into place....

A common narrative is that COVID-19 cost Trump re-election. We do not find supporting evidence; if anything, the pandemic helped Trump. However, we find substantial evidence that voters abandoned Trump in counties with large increases in health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act,...

We show that the anticipation of COVID-19 vaccines reduces voluntary social distancing. In a large-scale preregistered survey experiment with a representative sample, we study whether providing information about the safety, effectiveness, and availability of COVID-19 vaccines affects compliance...