Previous studies of survey data for the United States and other countries find that on average women tend to understate their body weight, while on average both men and women overstate their height. Social norms have been posited as a potential explanation for misreporting of weight and height,...

Several recent studies find that as of 2015, a significant share of working-age adults in the United States participates in nonstandard work arrangements. Such arrangements tend to lack long-term employment contracts and are often referred to as "gig economy" jobs. This paper investigates the...

A variety of researchers and public entities have estimated the prevalence of nontraditional work arrangements - using diverse definitions - in recent decades, and the topic has received increasing attention in the past five years. Despite numerous media reports that the prevalence of...

Using a novel database of 159 million online job postings, we examine changes in employer skill requirements for education and specific skillsets between 2007 and 2017. We find that upskilling - in terms of increasing demands for bachelor's degrees as well as software skills - was a persistent...

Previous research suggests that state Medicaid expansions implemented under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped large numbers of patients suffering from opioid use disorder (OUD) gain access to life-saving medications, including buprenorphine. However, Medicaid expansions...

Recent research offers mixed results concerning the relationship between inflation expectations and consumption, using qualitative measures of readiness to spend. We revisit this question using survey panel data from the United States of actual spending from 2009 through 2012 that also allow us...

Medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorder (OUD) consists of administering methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone in conjunction with behavioral therapy. Despite strong support in the medical and public health communities for MAT, fewer than 10 percent of US patients with...

Policymakers have an interest in identifying the differences in behavior patterns - namely, habitual caloric intake and physical activity levels - that contribute to demographic variation in body mass index (BMI) and obesity risk. While disparities in mean BMI and obesity rates between whites...

In this paper we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance with a unique longitudinal data set covering all Florida public school students in grades 3-10 over a five-year period. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data set...

We develop a model of contracting in which individual effort choices are subject to social pressure to conform to the average effort level of others in the same risk-sharing group. As in related models of social interactions, a change in exogenous variables or contract terms generates a social...