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on Health Economics |
| By: | Amanda Dahlstrand; Shan Huang; Nestor Le Nestour; Guy Michaels |
| Abstract: | Many modern organizations use knowledge hierarchies, where frontline workers try to resolve tasks and pass those they cannot resolve to experts. But the implications of this organization of expertise are not well understood, especially if firm revenues depend on who resolves each task or the firm generates downstream externalities. We study a knowledge hierarchy (KH) using 500, 000 patient cases from an online primary care firm, linked to outcomes and costs across Sweden's healthcare system. We use variation in assignment arising from temporary doctor congestion, controlling for date-by-three-hour windows and flexible case characteristics. Within the KH, nurses resolve 70% of cases and pass the remainder to doctors. Relative to doctor-only care, the KH modestly increases external primary care and ED visits but has no adverse effects on hospitalizations, earnings losses, or mortality. Although the mean effect of KH on systemwide (firm plus downstream) production costs is small, this masks substantial heterogeneity. Compared to using only doctors, the savings from the firm's selective use of the KH equal 1.6% of online primary care costs. However, our main finding is that reassigning cases between the direct-to-doctor and KH routes within 15-minute windows to minimize systemwide production costs would save 6.8% of online primary care costs. |
| Keywords: | Division of Labor, Productivity, Healthcare |
| JEL: | J24 I19 L23 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26258 |
| By: | Jason Abaluck; Leila Agha; David C. Chan Jr |
| Abstract: | Medical guidelines translate clinical evidence into treatment rules, but the evidence may identify treatment benefits more clearly than harms. We study anticoagulation for atrial fibrillation, combining randomized trials with Veterans Health Administration data. Trial evidence reveals substantial heterogeneity in stroke-prevention benefits but does not reliably identify how treatment-induced bleeding harms vary across patients. In the target population, patients with larger predicted stroke benefits also have higher untreated bleeding risk, making this ambiguity consequential. We evaluate existing guidelines and develop maximin and minimax-regret treatment rules robust to alternative harm structures. At a benchmark preventing 50% of preventable strokes, robust rules induce 33-41% fewer bleeds than random treatment and outperform existing guidelines. Finite-sample uncertainty generates noticeable instability in fine patient rankings but little instability in treatment assignments or welfare. Physician performance and the relationship between guideline adherence and skill also depend substantially on assumptions about how treatment-induced bleeding harms vary across patients. |
| JEL: | C44 D81 I11 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35798 |
| By: | Gabriella Conti; Evelina Björkegren; Aline Bütikofer; Mårten Palme; Kjell G. Salvanes |
| Abstract: | This study examines the long-term consequences of neonatal health using three birth anthropometric measures - weight, length, and head circumference - and analyzes their differential associations with outcomes across the life course. Using linked Swedish and Norwegian population registers with follow-up into adulthood, we compare birth measures of singletons and twins and further estimate within-twin-pair fixed-effects models that control for shared genetic and family environmental factors. Our samples comprise up to approximately 679, 000 singletons and 10, 400 twins in Sweden, and 347, 841 singletons and 6, 762 twins in Norway, followed into adulthood. We find that different birth measures capture distinct aspects of fetal development with varying predictive validity across outcome domains. Birth length emerges as the strongest predictor of health outcomes (infant mortality, adult height), consistent with its role as a cumulative indicator of skeletal growth throughout gestation. Birth weight retains stronger associations with cognitive and educational outcomes (grade point average [GPA], years of schooling) in conditional models. Head circumference shows weak and inconsistent associations across specifications. Using within-pair head circumference differences to classify twins as symmetrically versus asymmetrically growth restricted, we find that symmetric intrauterine growth restriction is associated with substantially worse long-term outcomes than asymmetric restriction. In Norwegian twin pairs, growth restriction is associated with lower general cognitive ability (measured at military enlistment) relative to the unaffected co-twin; this within-pair deficit is more than twice as large for symmetric as for asymmetric restriction. We also document significant intergenerational transmission of birth anthropometrics, suggesting both environmental and genetic contributions. Finally, our register-based design with near-complete population coverage minimizes selection bias and attrition while providing statistical power for within-pair analyses across multiple outcomes. Exclusive reliance on birth weight may obscure important information about early-gestation developmental insults. |
| Keywords: | Birth weight; Birth length; Head circumference; Twin studies; Fetal origins; Intrauterine growth restriction; Linkage to administrative data |
| JEL: | I14 I12 J13 J24 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26233 |
| By: | Herbst, Chris (Arizona State University) |
| Abstract: | In November 2025, New Mexico became the first U.S. state to implement a universal, no-cost child care subsidy program. This paper estimates difference-in-differences and event-study models to evaluate the impact of universal child care on mothers' short-run labor supply adjustments. Using monthly Current Population Survey data, I find that the reform produced different responses across lower- and higher-skilled mothers. For lower-skilled mothers, the policy increased employment along both the extensive and intensive margins. Conversely, higher-skilled mothers, particularly those who are married, experienced reductions in paid work, with partially offsetting increases in school enrollment. Thus, while universal child care relaxes a binding constraint among disadvantaged families, it acts as an in-kind transfer for their advantaged counterparts. |
| Keywords: | child care, labor supply, maternal employment |
| JEL: | J13 J22 H75 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18968 |
| By: | Ah-Reum Lee; William H. Dow; Jacqueline M. Torres |
| Abstract: | A large literature examines the economic and health returns to college education. We extend this literature by studying the upward intergenerational effects of children’s education on parental mortality. We exploit Korea’s 1993 Higher Education Reform, which we estimate raised college completion by 13 percentage points among eldest children in the 1974–1983 birth cohorts relative to the prior 10-year cohort. Using data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, reduced-form estimates indicate a 27% (s.e.=10%) reduction in mortality among parents whose oldest child was in the reform-affected cohort. Because the reform affected college completion but not other education levels or quality, we use it as an instrumental variable (IV) for child college completion. IV estimates indicate a 20% (s.e.=7%) reduction in parental mortality for children induced to complete college by the reform. These parents received greater financial support and contact from their children and had lower smoking and higher physical activity, although these mechanisms explain only a small share of the mortality benefit. Effects were larger for parents of daughters in reduced-form analyses, although IV estimates did not differ significantly by child gender. Future research should further investigate the mechanisms through which children’s college education affects parental mortality. |
| JEL: | I12 I26 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35792 |
| By: | Asad, Saher; Behrer, A. Patrick; Heger, Martin; Yanez Pagans, Monica |
| Abstract: | Ambient air pollution is a major health risk, but its implications for human capital formation are not well understood, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where exposure is high. This paper estimates the causal effect of sustained exposure to fine particulate matter on primary-school learning in rural Punjab, Pakistan. The paper combines longitudinal student achievement data from the Learning and Educational Achievements in Punjab Schools project with high-resolution satellite-based fine particulate matter estimates. To address endogeneity of pollution to local economic activity, the analysis exploits plausibly exogenous variation generated by open burning of agricultural residue interacted with wind direction, constructing school-year measures of upwind fire exposure as instruments for local fine particulate matter. The instrumental variable estimates show that higher school-year fine particulate matter significantly slows learning, with larger effects in mathematics than in language subjects. The results are consistent with impacts operating during instructional months: pollution exposure during the school year predicts lower achievement, while exposure during vacation months has little explanatory power. The findings show statistically imprecise heterogeneity by age and gender, opposite to patterns found in comparable settings. The analysis is organized around a simple framework in which learning depends on attendance, cognition, effort, and instructional quality, each a function of exposure to poor air quality. Pollution increases student absences, but this attendance channel explains only a small portion of the total effect, implying that most of the learning loss is non-attendance-related and likely operates through the framework’s other channels — direct effects on cognition, reduced effort, and degraded instructional quality. |
| Date: | 2026–09–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11463 |
| By: | Bertrand Achou; Mehdi Ammi; Minchung Hsu; Minjoon Lee; Tomoe Naito; Keisuke Otsu |
| Abstract: | Population aging and shortages of long-term care workers have increased interest in caregiving robots and information and communication technology (ICT). This paper provides novel large-scale evidence on older individuals’ perceptions of such technologies, drawing on a custom-designed internet survey of 4, 314 Japanese individuals aged 55 to 75. Respondents choose between two otherwise identical nursing homes: one in which all care is provided by human caregivers, and one in which robots and ICT are used to provide a substantial share of care in one randomly assigned domain (communication, monitoring, or mobility assistance), while other care remains human-provided. A majority of respondents (65 percent) prefer nursing homes where robots and ICT are used. Acceptance differs substantially across care domains: It is highest for mobility assistance, intermediate for monitoring, and lowest for communication. The average willingness to pay (WTP) for a nursing home where robots and ICT provide a substantial share of care is sizable, at 8 percent above the typical nursing home fee. Prior awareness of caregiving robots is positively associated with both acceptance and WTP, pointing to the potential role of information in shaping older individuals’ preferences. Acceptance and WTP are also strongly associated with sentiments toward robots and ICT expressed in attitude questions, providing support for the internal consistency of survey responses. A back-of-the-envelope calculation offers suggestive evidence that the benefits of introducing robots and ICT can be much larger than the costs, in particular for mobility-aid robots. |
| Keywords: | Long-term care, caregiving robots and ICT, nursing homes, survey. |
| JEL: | I10 J14 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsi:irersi:27 |
| By: | Anna French; Nicholas Vreugdenhil |
| Abstract: | We identify a new channel for regulatory leakage: the “permitting channel”. In many settings, permits lock in the regulatory regime at approval, allowing firms to acquire the option to invest under current rules. Unlike the conventional Green Paradox response, this channel operates without accelerating physical investment and pollution. We develop a framework in which firms can use real options to avoid anticipated regulation. We estimate the framework using Colorado’s oil and gas reforms, where permits surged before regulation but drilling did not. Policy-relevant designs that remove the permitting channel substantially reduce the health risks from pollution despite amplifying anticipatory investment. |
| JEL: | Q0 Q4 Q5 Q52 Q53 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35794 |
| By: | de Silva, Lihini (Monash University Australia); Mahmood, Rafat (Monash University); Ponnusamy, Sundar (Deakin University Australia) |
| Abstract: | Agricultural residue burning releases pollutants that prevailing winds carry across administrative boundaries. We study the effects of fire-driven pollution on the cognitive development and educational trajectories of around 700, 000 children aged 5--16 in Pakistan, combining satellite-derived burned area data, wind direction, and nationally representative learning assessments. Our treatment measure captures fires within 15 kilometers of a child's district that burn upwind; comparable downwind fires, which reflect the same agricultural activity but carry smoke away from the child, serve as a placebo. A one standard deviation increase in upwind fire exposure reduces test scores in mathematics, reading, and English by roughly 0.02 standard deviations; downwind fires have no effect. Impacts are concentrated in the school term, with no effect from summer-holiday fires. Boys and girls suffer similar cognitive losses, but over time older girls face higher dropout, consistent with lower perceived returns to female education in a patrilocal society, and child labor rises. The results survive extensive robustness checks. Agricultural burning is thus a constraint on human capital development, not only a public health issue. |
| Keywords: | agricultural fires, air pollution, cognitive development, child labor |
| JEL: | Q53 Q54 I25 J13 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18977 |
| By: | Blankespoor, Brian; Dasgupta, Susmita; Wheeler, David |
| Abstract: | Air pollution imposes severe health and economic costs worldwide, yet ground-based monitoring data are difficult and expensive to collect, limiting the information available for policy analysis. This paper develops machine learning models to estimate daily air quality using satellite observations, meteorological data, emissions inventories, and geographic information. Data sources include IQAir ground station reports; atmospheric pollutant concentrations from the European Space Agency’s tropospheric monitoring instrument, TROPOMI; and meteorological data from the Copernicus ERA5 Land database. The paper estimates separate random forest models for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide, using a random forest algorithm that quantifies variable importance. The results are robust: TROPOMI dominates predictions for fine particulates (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide, with the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research and meteorological variables providing secondary contributions. For ozone, the meteorological variables are most influential, followed by TROPOMI and the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research. Geographic features matter across all pollutants—elevation, latitude, and coastal proximity consistently rank high, while Köppen-Geiger climate zones vary in importance by pollutant. Temporal tracking is validated by correlating daily monitored versus predicted pollutant levels across urban areas using IQAir ground station data. Median intertemporal correlations exceed 0.69 for all pollutants, with upper quartiles above 0.82 and lower quartiles above 0.53. Although the pilot uses data from April to November 2025, TROPOMI has been available since 2018 and the Copernicus ERA5 Land database provides matching coverage, enabling daily estimates from April 2018 onward on a global terrestrial grid at 0.1-degree resolution. |
| Date: | 2026–09–14 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:11448 |
| By: | Justina Klimaviciute; Pierre Pestieau; Jerome Schoenmaeckers |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes the design of a social policy scheme for long-term care in a setting where disabled elderly individuals receive care both informally, from family members, and formally, from professional providers. We introduce two key features: informal caregivers bear substantial physiological and psychological costs, and they tend to be myopic with respect to these health consequences. Under perfect observability, an optimal policy can induce caregivers to exercise caution and provide an appropriate level of informal care. However, when individual characteristics are not common knowledge, public policy must resort to distortions and indirect instruments to guide agents toward optimal behavior - a classic second-best problem. |
| Keywords: | long-term care, myopia, caregiving burden, Social insurance |
| JEL: | H21 J14 D91 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13016 |
| By: | R. Anton Braun; Karen A. Kopecky |
| Abstract: | Long-term care is costly. About 45 percent of 65-year-old Americans will require formal long-term care assistance during their lifetime and one in twelve will incur out-of-pocket expenses of $200, 000 or more. Surprisingly, only 10 percent of retirees have private long-term care insurance. We use a quantitative structural model to show that an obstacle to increasing coverage is disagreement across the income distribution: scaling back public long-term care insurance expands the private market and benefits the affluent but imposes large welfare losses on the poor, while universal public insurance does the opposite. We then show that making the main public insurer, Medicaid, the primary rather than the secondary payer of long-term care costs, while retaining its means tests, raises welfare for nearly all Americans. Private insurers respond by offering smaller, more profitable policies, and total coverage against long-term care risk rises with only a modest increase in public expenditures. |
| Keywords: | long-term care insurance; Medicaid; means-tested transfers; adverse selection; insurance rejections |
| JEL: | D82 D91 E62 G22 H30 I13 |
| Date: | 2026–09–28 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedcwq:103852 |
| By: | Thomas Plunkett (Centre for Health Economics, Monash Business School, Monash University, Caulfield, Australia); Karinna Saxby (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic an Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Australia); Yuting Zhang (Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic an Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Australia) |
| Abstract: | Cost-related medication non-adherence is prevalent across many healthcare systems and is associated with poorer health outcomes. Pharmaceutical expenditure ceiling policies that reduce patient copayments once cumulative spending reaches a defined limit offer financial protection against high out-of-pocket medication costs. Using whole-of-population administrative prescription claims data, we provide the first population-level quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of reaching Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme Safety Net on medication utilisation (n=1, 537, 885). We apply a dynamic difference-in-differences framework, comparing prescription use before and after individuals reach the safety net, using future threshold-crossers as controls. Reaching the safety net increased average monthly prescriptions dispensed by 0.715 (a 15% increase). Effects were driven primarily by pre-existing medications, particularly those used to treat chronic conditions. Responses were largest among lower-income individuals, especially those not eligible for government concession pricing, people with chronic health conditions, and individuals aged 40-69 years. These findings suggest that reducing out-of-pocket medicine costs increases medication utilisation, with the strongest effects observed among populations at elevated risk of cost-related non-adherence. The results provide new evidence on the distributional effects of pharmaceutical expenditure ceiling policies and have implications for the design of policies intended to improve equitable access to medicines. |
| Keywords: | cost-sharing, copayments, prescription medicines, medication adherence |
| JEL: | I11 I13 I14 I18 D12 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2026n15 |
| By: | Antoine Nebout (UMR PSAE - Paris-Saclay Applied Economics - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement); Noémi Berlin (EconomiX - EconomiX - UPN - Université Paris Nanterre - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Emmanuel Kemel (HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales); Emmanuel Paroissien (UMR PSAE - Paris-Saclay Applied Economics - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the relationships between overall diet quality and attitudes toward risk and time using a general population survey. We combine a food frequency questionnaire and a choice-based preference module to elicit individual risk and time preferences. The online questionnaire was administered to a socioeconomic panel representative of the French population. We show that risk and time preferences are associated with individual heterogeneity in key aspects of diet quality, a result that holds across a wide range of robustness checks. Using a hierarchical Bayes framework, we jointly estimate individual risk aversion and impatience parameters and show that associations hold for both model-free and structural estimates of risk and time preferences. We further show that these associations account for a substantial share of the heterogeneity in dietary outcomes beyond sociodemographic controls. Risk and time preferences contribute to both the income–diet-quality and education–diet-quality gradients, but in opposite directions, resulting in a limited net contribution to explaining socioeconomic inequalities in diet quality. |
| Abstract: | Cet article explore les relations entre la qualité globale de l'alimentation et les attitudes face au risque et au temps à partir d'une enquête menée auprès de la population générale. Nous combinons un questionnaire sur la fréquence alimentaire et un module de préférences basé sur les choix afin de déterminer les préférences individuelles en matière de risque et de temps. Le questionnaire en ligne a été administré à un panel socio-économique représentatif de la population française. Nous montrons que les préférences en matière de risque et de temps sont associées à l'hétérogénéité individuelle concernant des aspects clés de la qualité de l'alimentation, un résultat qui se confirme à travers un large éventail de tests de robustesse. À l'aide d'un cadre bayésien hiérarchique, nous estimons conjointement les paramètres individuels d'aversion au risque et d'impatience, et démontrons que ces associations se vérifient tant pour les estimations sans modèle que pour les estimations structurelles des préférences en matière de risque et de temps. |
| Keywords: | Nutritional inequality, Time preference |
| Date: | 2026–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05762319 |
| By: | Di Giacomo Marina (University of Turin, Italy); Mantovani Marco (University of Milan Bicocca, Italy); Poggi Ambra (ESOMAS Department, University of Turin, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Early detection of CVD risk factors through preventive screening programs can substantially reduce adverse outcomes, yet participation rates remain suboptimal. In this paper, we examine whether perceived social closeness between the sender and the recipient of an invitation to a free cardiovascular health check affects health beliefs and willingness to engage in preventive health intentions. Using a survey experiment on a representative sample of approximately 2, 588 individuals aged 40-74 in England-the target population for the NHS Health Check program-we randomly assign participants to receive an invitation message from a peer who either shares or does not share their social norms. We study whether social closeness between the messenger and the recipient shapes perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, and perceived benefits, as predicted by the Health Belief Model. The manipulation successfully alters perceptions of social closeness, and the estimated effects are consistent with the hypothesis that socially closer peer messages are more effective in promoting preventive health intentions. |
| Keywords: | Preventive healthcare, survey experiment, behavioral public policies, social closeness, cardiovascular disease |
| JEL: | I12 I18 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tur:wpapnw:110 |
| By: | Colombe, Kenneth; Kroczek, Martin; Kumar, Mukesh; Otto, Felix |
| Abstract: | We reassess Rossi and Villar (2020), who study whether large subsidies for malaria prevention in Senegal increased parental investments in child health. Using the authors' curated analysis files, we first establish computational reproducibility of the published tables and figures. We then conduct a focused and robustness replication of the main difference-in-differences result on child health expenditures and health-seeking behavior. We corroborate the original findings that child health expenditures and health-seeking behavior in more malarious areas "catch up" after the subsidy, primarily via the extensive margin. The replication scope was constrained by the absence of raw data and cleaning scripts, as well as sparse documentation of variable construction in the primary dataset. |
| JEL: | C23 H51 I12 I15 I18 O12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:331 |
| By: | Veer, Evan; Fiala, Lenka |
| Abstract: | Björkman Nyqvist et al. (2024) evaluate a randomized experiment in rural Uganda that studies whether strengthening women’s communication skills within marriage can shift household decisions toward greater investment in child health. All treatments provide health and nutrition training, varying whether mothers or fathers are involved, while one additional treatment incorporates a communication skills curriculum for mothers, allowing the authors to isolate the effect of communication. The authors report five core findings: First, women offered communication training report improved relationship quality. Second, the communication treatment increases the frequency of discussions between spouses about health and finances, but does not improve men’s health knowledge, indicating limited information transmission. Third, communication training does not increase the adoption of health-promoting behaviors beyond the gains from women’s health training alone. Fourth, the communication training shifts household spending, particularly on meat and fish. Fifth, none of the treatments improves the study's primary child health outcomes. We successfully computationally reproduce the paper's main claims, and show that the results are robust to corrections for multiple hypothesis testing, inclusion of control variables in analyses, and an alternative definition of relationship quality measure. |
| Date: | 2026–10–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:7qgtj_v1 |
| By: | Bertoli, Simone; Gazeaud, Jules |
| Abstract: | Godlonton and Theoharides (2025) argue that Filipino migrants' exposure to more liberal reproductive health policies reduces origin-community fertility. This comment shows that the differential effect they present is insufficient to conclude that more liberal policies significantly reduce fertility at origin-on average or in any single province. These claims require estimates of average or province-specific effects, but neither the article nor the replication files include information to recover them. The Authors declined our requests to share portions of the analysis data at the province-year level or information on a key coefficient estimated by their code but left unreported. We overcome this otherwise binding data constraint using information from their working paper. We show that the average effect is far from significant (|t-stat| = 0.86), and that the province-specific effect may be negative and significant for as few as one out of 84 provinces. This occurs even though the differential effect is negative and highly statistically significant, as in Godlonton and Theoharides (2025). |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:327 |
| By: | Abajian, Alexander C.; Fergusson, Anika S.; Lu, Chenhui; Upadhyay, Sakshi |
| Abstract: | Arceo et al. (2016) (AHO) examine the effects of air pollution on neonatal and infant mortality in Mexico City (CDMX), Mexico. The authors estimate these effects using administrative data on infant mortality across CDMX municipalities in conjunction with measured hourly pollution concentrations, using both two-way fixed effects and an IV approach that exploits thermal inversions. The IV results show that a 1µg/m3 increase in average maximum daily coarse particulate matter (PM10) raises weekly infant mortality by 0.23 deaths per 100, 000 births and that a 1 ppb increase in carbon monoxide (CO) raises infant mortality by 0.0046 deaths per 100, 000 births; both effects are significant at the 1% level. First, we successfully reproduce all results in the main paper from the provided analysis data; some minor differences emerge between our reproduced results and the reported coefficients, but they do not affect the qualitative findings. Second, we attempt to reconstruct components of AHO's analysis sample using publicly available data. While differences in data availability and processing limit direct comparability, the reconstructed data preserve the direction of the original results and retain statistical significance in some specifications. The degree of agreement varies across reconstruction exercises: estimates are often less precise, losing statistical significance in several specifications-particularly for CO- and frequently fall outside the authors' original confidence intervals. Finally, we verify the authors' results are robust to alternative choices for sample selection and standard error choices. |
| Keywords: | Replication, Reproducibility |
| JEL: | I1 O1 Q53 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:323 |
| By: | la Cour, Lisbeth (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School); Kruse-Becher, Sanne (Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Stuttgart); Larsen, Birthe (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School); Jepsen Mejlgaard, Martin (Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School) |
| Abstract: | Wars generate economic costs beyond conflict zones through diaspora networks. We examine how war onset in immigrants’ countries of origin affects mental health in Denmark using nationwide administrative registers and a within-individual event-study design. Psychotropic medication use rises persistently following war onset, particularly among non-citizens, parents, and individuals with a same-origin spouse, but only when conflicts persist. Higher local co-ethnic concentration attenuates these effects. We further show that war onset increases publicly financed pharmaceutical expenditure, implying measurable fiscal costs for immigrant receiving countries. These findings reveal important cross-border welfare spillovers of armed conflict. |
| Keywords: | International migration; War; Mental health |
| JEL: | F22 F51 I10 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:cbsnow:2026_012 |
| By: | Mathieu Lefebvre; Harun Onder; Pierre Pestieau; Gregory Ponthière; Emi Suzuki |
| Abstract: | Because the poor face higher mortality, they are under-represented in the samples used to measure poverty. This paper quantifies this missing poor bias across 92 developing and least developed countries by comparing observed headcount poverty rates with counterfactual rates that would prevail if all individuals enjoyed the survival conditions of the top income class. Using income distributions and life expectancy by wealth quintile, we find the bias to be substantial and highly heterogeneous, from negligible in parts of Central Asia to 15 percentage points in Bolivia and 36 in Bhutan. Aggregated, the correction reveals an invisible continent of more than 116 million uncounted poor, large enough to reverse international poverty rankings. Instrumenting health system coverage with malaria ecology, we then show that universal health coverage causally reduces both the bias and the steepness of the income-mortality gradient through which it arises. A ten point gain in coverage lowers the bias by about one percentage point, three times the OLS estimate. Progress toward universal health coverage therefore yields a second dividend, correcting a measurement distortion concentrated where deprivation is deepest. |
| Keywords: | poverty, measurement, mortality, missing poor bias |
| JEL: | I32 J11 J17 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_13015 |
| By: | Adrien Bilal; Diego R. Känzig; Krzysztof Lisiecki |
| Abstract: | This paper documents large indirect mortality impacts of climate change. Exploiting natural global temperature variability, we find that 1°C of warming increases annual mortality by 2.5 deaths per 1, 000 individuals, compared to 0.1 deaths per 1, 000 due to the associated local heat exposure. Using external estimates of the impact of global income on mortality, we show that the macroeconomic effects of global temperature changes explain two thirds of the gap between these estimates. We use this evidence to estimate damage functions in a neoclassical growth model that links mortality and economic activity and accounts for adaptation to mortality impacts. Mortality contributes $400 per ton of CO₂ to the Social Cost of Carbon, or one quarter of total climate damages. These results suggest that economic adaptation has a double dividend by also reducing climate-related mortality. |
| JEL: | E01 I15 O44 Q51 Q54 Q58 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35832 |
| By: | Evangelos Dioikitopoulos; Rigissa Megalokonomou; Tommaso Sartori; Yves Zenou |
| Abstract: | Public information campaigns often rely on credible expert messengers to influence people's beliefs. We study how messenger identity and communication technology shape persuasion in a large-scale randomized experiment on vaccination attitudes among young adults in Greece. Participants receive an identical public-health message that varies only in who delivers it-a medical scientist or a social media influencer-and in how it is delivered-through immersive virtual reality or conventional video. Exposure raises trust in vaccines and trust in the healthcare system. Scientists are rated substantially more credible than influencers yet are no more persuasive on average; the two groups' effectiveness rests on different characteristics-the scientists' on perceived reliability and knowledgeability, the influencers' on personal appeal, prior familiarity, and reputation. We find that persuasion is greater under virtual reality, consistent with stronger engagement. Changes in beliefs persist for at least six months, and initially hesitant participants report greater willingness to vaccinate. A model in which engagement, prior uncertainty, and effective credibility enter persuasion multiplicatively rationalizes these patterns. |
| Keywords: | randomized experiment, persuasion, belief formation, source credibility, messenger familiarity, social media influencers, virtual reality, engagement, health communication, vaccination |
| JEL: | C93 D83 I12 D91 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crm:wpaper:26236 |
| By: | Black, Nicole (Monash University); Ma, Bernice (Monash University); Mai, D Tung (University of Melbourne); Skeels, Christopher (University of Melbourne); Staub, Kevin (University of Melbourne) |
| Abstract: | We develop a fixed-effects estimation framework for fractional-outcome panel models with a logit conditional mean. Pairwise quasi-differencing eliminates individual effects from the moment conditions, yielding a generalized method of moments estimator that is consistent under the stated moment restrictions even when the number of time period is finite and fixed. The framework allows unrestricted dependence between individual effects and covariates, accommodates endogenous regressors through instrumental variables, and extends to multivariate shares that sum to one. Boundary observations require no adjustment, and average semi-elasticities can be estimated without recovering the individual effects. We apply the framework to Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), using HILDA (Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia) survey data for 2011-2023 and instruments based on the scheme's staggered geographic rollout. We examine how NDIS receipt affects the allocation of time across paid work, housework, disability care, and remaining activities for recipients and other household members. The estimates indicate that recipients reduce work and disability care, while other household members increase disability care. |
| Keywords: | panel data, fixed effects, fractional responses, share data, time use, disability support |
| JEL: | C23 C24 I18 J22 |
| Date: | 2026–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18969 |