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on Health Economics |
| By: | Riccardo Ciacci (Universidad Pontificia Comillas); María Micaela María (Princeton University) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies how the presence of adult entertainment establishments affects the incidence of sex crimes, including sexual abuse and rape. We build a high frequency daily and weekly panel that combines the exact location of not-self-reported sex crimes with the day of opening and exact location of adult entertainment establishments in New York City. We find that these businesses decrease sex crime by 13% per police precinct one week after the opening, and have no effect on other types of crimes. The results imply that the reduction is mostly driven by potential sex offenders frequenting these establishments rather than committing crimes. We also rule out the possibility that other mechanisms are driving our results, such as an increase in the number of police officers, a reduction in the number of street prostitutes and a possible reduction in the number of potential victims in areas where these businesses opened. The effects are robust to using alternative measures of sex crimes. |
| Keywords: | Sex crimes, rape, adult entertainment establishments, substitute services |
| JEL: | I18 J16 J47 K14 K42 |
| Date: | 2020–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pri:econom:2020-44&r= |
| By: | Fengshi Niu; Harsha Nori; Brian Quistorff; Rich Caruana; Donald Ngwe; Aadharsh Kannan |
| Abstract: | Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects in domains such as healthcare or social science often involves sensitive data where protecting privacy is important. We introduce a general meta-algorithm for estimating conditional average treatment effects (CATE) with differential privacy (DP) guarantees. Our meta-algorithm can work with simple, single-stage CATE estimators such as S-learner and more complex multi-stage estimators such as DR and R-learner. We perform a tight privacy analysis by taking advantage of sample splitting in our meta-algorithm and the parallel composition property of differential privacy. In this paper, we implement our approach using DP-EBMs as the base learner. DP-EBMs are interpretable, high-accuracy models with privacy guarantees, which allow us to directly observe the impact of DP noise on the learned causal model. Our experiments show that multi-stage CATE estimators incur larger accuracy loss than single-stage CATE or ATE estimators and that most of the accuracy loss from differential privacy is due to an increase in variance, not biased estimates of treatment effects. |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2202.11043&r= |
| By: | Enrique Llopis (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Gloria Quiroga (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Felipa Sánchez Salazar (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Ã ngel L. Velasco (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain); Ana de la Fuente (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Rocío García Calvo (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Laura Ramos (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain); Víctor M. Sierra (Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain) |
| Abstract: | We deal with early-infancy mortality in Ciudad Real and Guadalajara between 1840 and 1899. Our aims are threefold: (1) To inquire whether female excess mortality took place among the neonatal, infant, and early childhood population subsets. (2) To examine the scope of under-registration in the burial and baptisms records over time. (3) To analyze the evolution of gross neonatal, infant, and early-youth mortality rates. We find that: (a) Neither baptisms sex-ratios nor death rates sex-ratios confirm the female over-mortality hypothesis in the early-infancy, although some point to a gender discrimination in terms of burial practices. (b) A meaningful under-registration of child deaths entails a downward bias in the calculation of infant and neonatal mortality rates. (c) The rise of infant mortality in inland Spain during the third quarter of the 19th century was lower than assumed by the literature. |
| Keywords: | gender discrimination, mortality, early infancy, Castile, 19th century |
| JEL: | J11 J16 N01 N33 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:2111&r= |
| By: | Jeremy Greenwood (University of Pennsylvania); Nezih Guner (Centro de Estudios Monetarios y Financieros (CEMFI)); Karen A. Kopecky (Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta) |
| Abstract: | The labor-force participation rates of prime-age U.S. workers dropped in March 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and have still not fully recovered. Could increased substance abuse during the pandemic be an important contributing factor? Substance-abuse deaths were elevated during the pandemic relative to trend indicating an increase in the number of substance abusers, and abusers of opioids and crystal methamphetamine have lower labor-force participation rates than non-abusers. A range of estimates of the number of additional substance abusers during the pandemic indicate that increased substance abuse can account for 9 to 30 percent of the decline in prime-age labor force participation between February 2020 and June 2021. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19 Pandemic, Substance Abuse, Labor-Force Participation |
| JEL: | I12 J11 J21 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eag:rereps:35&r= |
| By: | Cozzi, Guido |
| Abstract: | Shall vaccine patents be temporarily suspended? In a simple model, I reflect the essence of the debate on the Covid-19 patent waiver. The central message is that if the probability of imitating innovative vaccines is low, then a patent waiver would be harmless to future R&D. Conversely, a patent waiver would be undesirable if it is too easy to imitate future innovations. This paper also derives a simple policy rule for R&D subsidies that governments can use to correct the adverse effects of the waiver on the incentives to innovate. The vaccine industry is highly concentrated. While the social gains from successful imitation are huge, it is hard to transfer vaccine know-how from the handful of patent holders to potential imitators. In this environment, loosening intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection in a pandemic has significant macroeconomic advantages. Still, it may harm future innovation because it would create an expectation of future IPRs waivers. This paper allows an upbeat assessment of the conditions that make a patent waiver desirable, even considering the future R&D implications. Moreover, it shows how reasonably minimal rises of R&D subsidies can overcome the IPRs uncertainty. |
| Keywords: | Covid-19; Research and Development; Vaccines; Intellectual; Health Economics; Property Rights. |
| JEL: | I1 I18 O3 O31 O32 O34 |
| Date: | 2022–02–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:111990&r= |
| By: | Silvia Angerer (UMIT - Private University for Health Sciences, Medical Informatics and Technology,Hall in Tirol); Daniela Glätzle-Rützler (University of Innsbruck); Philipp Lergetporer (Technical University of Munich and ifo Institute); Thomas Rittmannsberger (University of Innsbruck) |
| Abstract: | Peoples’ willingness to vaccinate is critical to combating the COVID-19 pandemic. We devise a representative experiment to study how the design of the vaccine approval procedure affects public attitudes towards vaccination. Compared to an Emergency Use Authorization, choosing the more thorough Accelerated Authorization approval procedure increases vaccination intentions by 13 percentage points. Effects of increased duration of the approval procedure are positive and significant only for Emergency Use Authorization. Treatment effects are homogenous across population subgroups. Increased trust in the vaccine is the key mediator of treatment effects on vaccination intentions. |
| Keywords: | vaccination, COVID-19, approval procedure, experiment. |
| JEL: | I12 I18 C93 D83 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aiw:wpaper:20&r= |
| By: | Briones, Kristine Joy; Del Mundo, Michael Dominic |
| Abstract: | One of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is the increase in the number of excess deaths experienced by the country. From January 2020 to May 2021, the estimated number of excess deaths was 91,024 – around 11% higher than the expected number of deaths under pre-pandemic or "normal" conditions. These excess deaths came from Covid-19 Related Deaths and deaths from all other causes that suddenly increased during the pandemic, such as cardiovascular-related diseases. In particular, a large share of the excess deaths came from the age group 50 years and over and from Luzon, including the National Capital Region. Assuming that the current trends continue, projections show that the excess deaths for the full year 2021 will reach approximately 228,000. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, excess deaths, mortality, Philippines |
| JEL: | I1 J1 J11 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:111916&r= |
| By: | Ruben Hernandez-Murillo |
| Abstract: | A noteworthy aspect of the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic is the disproportionate effect of the virus on people of different age groups. The elderly have a higher risk of mortality than working-age adults, and they also face a higher mortality risk than children (CDC, 2020). Figure 1 shows the monthly age-specific crude mortality rates (CMRs) by age group for the United States during 2020 and 2021. One can see that the mortality rates of children (0 to 17 years) and young adults (18 to 29 years) are essentially flat, with 1 death per million children and at most 14 deaths per million young adults. The mortality rate of intermediate adults (30 to 49 years) is somewhat higher, as is the mortality rate of older adults (50 to 64 years). However, the figure illustrates the striking disparity between the mortality rate of elderly adults (65 years or older) and the rest of the population, including children: The mortality rate of the elderly peaked at 1,577 deaths per million in January 2021. The mortality rate for the overall population is the population-weighted average of the rates across all five age groups. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19 |
| Date: | 2022–03–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:c00003:93866&r= |
| By: | Irene González Rodríguez; Marta Pascual Sáez; David Cantarero Prieto |
| Abstract: | The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is not the same between regions. The aim of this study is to assess whether the infection rate depends on socioeconomic factors and whether there are spatial interactions between the Spanish regions. To this end, the Moran's test and spatial econometric models are used. The results suggest that the COVID-19 cases tends to form spatial clusters. In addition, the population density, the illiteracy rate and the unemployment rate are found to influence the spread of the coronavirus. Our analysis can be considered to apply policy intervention measures to reduce health population inequalities. |
| Keywords: | COVID-19, spatial econometrics, socioeconomic inequalities, Spain. |
| JEL: | I14 |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gov:wpregi:2201&r= |
| By: | Rughinis, Cosima; Vulpe, Simona Nicoleta; Flaherty, Michael G.; Vasile, Sorina |
| Abstract: | We estimate patterns of covariation between COVID-19 vaccination rates and a set of widely used indicators of human, social, and economic capital across 146 countries in July 2021 and February 2022. About 70% of the variability in COVID-19 vaccination rates worldwide can be explained by differences in the Human Development Index (HDI) and, specifically, in life expectancy at birth, one year after the campaign debut. Trust in doctors and nurses adds predictive value beyond the HDI, clarifying controversial discrepancies between vaccination rates in countries with similar levels of human development and vaccine availability. Cardiovascular disease deaths, an indicator of general health system effectiveness, and infant measles immunization coverage, an indicator of country-level immunization effectiveness, are also significant, though weaker, predictors of COVID-19 vaccination success. The metrics of economic inequality, perceived corruption, poverty, and inputs into the health system have strong bivariate correlations with COVID-19 vaccination but no longer remain statistically significant when controlling for the HDI. Our analysis identified the contours of a social structure that sustains life and is reproduced through this process. COVID-19 vaccines have proven to be part of the Matthew effect of accumulating advantages and aggravating disadvantages that the pandemic inflicted on societies and communities across the world. At the same time, the remaining variability in vaccination success that cannot be pinned down through these sets of metrics points to a considerable scope for collective and individual agency in a time of crisis. The mobilization and coordination in the vaccination campaigns of citizens, medical professionals, scientists, journalists, and politicians, amon |
| Keywords: | vaccination; COVID-19; life expectancy; trust; social structure; human development index |
| JEL: | Z13 |
| Date: | 2022–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:111981&r= |
| By: | Philipp Boeing (Centre for European Economic Research (Mannheim, Germany) - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (ZEW) - Universität Mannheim [Mannheim]); Yihan Wang (Métis Lab EM Normandie - EM Normandie - École de Management de Normandie) |
| Abstract: | This article explores how key stakeholders of an open innovation ecosystem interact in the digital context to overcome a public health emergency. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, comprehensive, accurate and timely community-based digital contact tracing serves as a decisive measure in curbing viral transmission. This strategy integrates agile government decision-making, corporate innovation, community coordination, and citizen participation. In the process of big data analytics, communities play the crucial role of the middleground that moderates the interactions between organizational upperground (government and enterprises) and individual underground (citizens) on the digital platform. To demonstrate the application, we study the three stages of "closed-end community management" in Wuhan, which represents China's "virus exceptionalism" amid the pandemic. Finally, we raise several ethical concerns related to this model for future R&D management research on digitization. |
| Keywords: | Community,Covid-19,Digital contact tracing,Innovation ecosystem,Big data analytics |
| Date: | 2021–03–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03071684&r= |