When Externalities Collide: Influenza and Pollution

By Joshua Graff Zivin, Matthew Neidell, Nicholas J. Sanders, and Gregor Singer

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2023

Influenza and air pollution each pose significant health risks with global economic consequences. Their shared etiological pathways present a case of compounding health risk via interacting externalities. Using instrumental variables based on changing win...

Globalization and Pandemics

By Pol Antràs, Stephen J. Redding, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg

American Economic Review, April 2023

We provide theory and evidence on the relationship between globalization and pandemics. Business travel facilitates trade and travel leads to human interactions that transmit disease. Trade-motivated travel generates an epidemiological externality across ...

The power of word choice

[Research Highlight]

March 29, 2023

Does slanted language affect public opinion?

Call for Applications for Successfully Navigating Your Economics PhD: A Virtual Mentoring Workshop for 3rd+ Year Women & Non-Binary PhD Students in Health Economics and Health Policy

[News]

April 06, 2023

The application deadline is June 1, 2023.

The importance of local activism

[Research Highlight]

April 12, 2023

Daniel Hungerman discusses the long-run effects of the first Earth Day celebration.

Every Day Is Earth Day: Evidence on the Long-Term Impact of Environmental Activism

By Daniel Hungerman and Vivek Moorthy

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2023

We use variation in weather to study the long-term effects of activism during the original Earth Day on attitudes, environmental outcomes, and children's health. Unusually bad weather on April 22, 1970 is associated with weaker support for the environment...

The Health Impacts of Hospital Delivery Practices

By David Card, Alessandra Fenizia, and David Silver

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, May 2023

Treatment practices vary widely across hospitals, often with little connection to patients' medical needs. We assess impacts of these differences in delivery practices at childbirth. We find that infants quasi-randomly delivered at hospitals with higher C...

The Prices in the Crises: What We Are Learning from 20 Years of Health Insurance in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

[Symposium: Universal Health Insurance]

By Jishnu Das and Quy-Toan Do

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

Governments in many low- and middle-income countries are developing health insurance products as a complement to tax-funded, subsidized provision of healthcare through publicly-operated facilities. We discuss two rationales for this transition. First, h...

America's Continuing Struggle with Mental Illnesses: Economic Considerations

[Symposium: Economics of Mental Health]

By Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

Mental illnesses affect roughly 20 percent of the US population. Like other health conditions, mental illnesses impose costs on individuals; they also generate costs that extend to family members and the larger society. Care for mental illnesses has evo...

Depression and Loneliness among the Elderly in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

[Symposium: Economics of Mental Health]

By Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, Erin Grela, Madeline McKelway, Frank Schilbach, Garima Sharma, and Girija Vaidyanathan

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

We combine data from longitudinal surveys in seven low- and middle-income countries (plus the United States for comparison) to document that depressive symptoms among those aged 55 and above are prevalent in those countries and, unlike in the United State...

Retrospectives: Edgar Sydenstricker: Household Equivalence Scales and the Causes of Pellagra

By Philip Clarke and Guido Erreygers

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

In the early part of the 20th century the disease pellagra, now almost unknown, affected and killed thousands of people in the United States. Some claimed it was an infection, while others maintained it was due to a dietary deficiency. The economist Edg...

Achieving Universal Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: Addressing Market Failures or Providing a Social Floor?

[Symposium: Universal Health Insurance]

By Katherine Baicker, Amitabh Chandra, and Mark Shepard

Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2023

The United States spends substantially more on health care than most developed countries, yet leaves a greater share of the population uninsured. We argue that incremental insurance expansions focused on addressing market failures will propagate inefficie...

Delivery practices and newborn health

[Page]

What impact do C-sections have on infant health outcomes?

Improving local health care in developing countries

[Page]

How important is doctor-provided care?

Distorted Innovation: Does the Market Get the Direction of Technology Right?

By Daron Acemoglu

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

In the presence of markup differences, externalities, and other social effects, the direction of innovation can be systematically distorted. I build a simple model of endogenous technology to study distortions in the direction of innovation. Empirical fin...

Emotional and Behavioral Impacts of Telementoring and Homeschooling Support on Children

By Hashibul Hassan, Asad Islam, Abu Siddique, and Liang Choon Wang

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We examine the emotional and behavioral impacts of a randomized telementoring intervention on Bangladeshi primary school-aged children during COVID-19 school closures. We measured the prevalence of emotional, conduct, hyperactivity/inattention, and peer-r...

The Mental Health of Caregivers and Young Children in Conflict-Affected Settings

By Juliana Sánchez-Ariza, Jorge Cuartas, and Andrés Moya

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

We analyze the effects of conflict-related violence on the mental health of caregivers and young children, as well as the role of caregivers' mental health in explaining the toll of conflict on early childhood mental health. Although an upcoming body of w...

Least Protected, Most Affected: Impacts of Migration Regularization Programs on Pandemic Resilience

By Maria José Urbina ⓡ Sandra V. Rozo ⓡ Andrés Moya ⓡ Ana María Ibáñez

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

How can regularization programs improve forced migrants' resilience to shocks? We leverage panel data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to assess whether Venezuelan forced migrants who were eligible for a regularization program in Colombia were more ...

The Impact of COVID-19 on Access to Mental Health Care Services

By Benjamin Harrell, Luca Fumarco, Patrick Button, David J. Schwegman, and Kyla Denwood

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the rate of mental health disorders, as well as demand for mental health services. It remains unclear, however, the extent to which it impacted access to mental health care. Using data from an audit field experiment, which ...

Gendered Disparities during the COVID-19 Crisis in Sierra Leone

By Madison Levine, Niccolò F. Meriggi, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Vasudha Ramakrishna, Maarten Voors, and Uday Wadehra

AEA Papers and Proceedings, May 2023

The COVID-19 outbreak had severe adverse impacts on the health and wealth of households in lower-income countries (LICs), and has affected even more severely female-headed households in LICs. Using high-frequency phone surveys in Sierra Leone, we show tha...