Is There a Link between Economic Outcomes and Genetic Evolution? Cross-Country Evidence from the Major Histocompatibility Complex This research develops a theory and presents empirical evidence of a link between economic outcomes and genetic evolution. Important properties for successful analysis of such a link are found in the adaptive immune system and particularly in the major histocompatibi...

The Evolution of Income-Related Health Inequalities in Switzerland over Time This paper presents new evidence on income-related health inequality and its development over time in Switzerland. We employ the methods lined out in van Doorslaer and Jones (2003) and van Doorslaer and Koolman (2004) measuring health using an interval regression approach to compute concentration indices and decomposin...

We use miscarriage as a biological shock to fertility in order to estimate the causal impact of motherhood on labor market outcomes. The number of instruments is increased by exploiting the response-heterogeneity to miscarriage along three dimensions: time, age, and birth order. This allows us to separately identify the effect of the first, second and third child as well as the effects of pregn...

The Effect of Personality Traits on Subject Choice and Performance in High School: Evidence from an English Cohort This paper investigates the relationship between personality traits in adolescence and performance in high school using a large and recent cohort study. In particular, we investigate the impact of locus of control, self-esteem and work ethics at age 15, on test scores at age 16, an...

Health and Health Behaviors during the Worst of Times: Evidence from the Great Recession While previous studies have shown that recessions are associated with better health outcomes and behaviors, the focus of these studies has been on the relatively milder recessions of the late 20th century. In this paper, we examine if the previously established counter-cyclical pattern in health and heath b...

Moral Hazard and Cash Benefits in Long-Term Home Care ∗ This paper tests empirically for ex-post moral hazard in a system based on demand-side subsidies. In the Netherlands, demand-side subsidies were introduced in 1996. Clients receive a cash benefit to purchase the type of home care (housework, personal care, support with mobility, organisational tasks or social support) they need from the ca...

Partial Identification of Willingness-to-Pay Using Shape Restrictions with an Application to the Value of a Statistical Life Economists often analyze cross-sectional data to estimate the value people implicit place on attributes of goods using hedonic methods. Usually strong enough assumptions are made on the functional form of utility to point identify individuals’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for...

The happiness literature provides evidence on various factors, other than money, that do seem to contribute to individual happiness. As one explores the produced “happiness economics” literature, it is direct to understand the difficulty to find proper information on developing countries reality. In our analysis we investigate the relationship between income, family composition, health and reli...

Intergenerational Persistence in Health in Developing Countries: The Penalty of Gender Inequality? This paper is motivated to investigate the often neglected payoff to investments in the health of girls and women in terms of next generation outcomes. This paper investigates the intergenerational persistence of health across time and region as well as across the distribution of maternal health. ...