Abstract This paper identifies the health penalty experienced by girls due to having a brother from endogenous sibling gender composition. We propose a girls-to-girls comparison strategy and rule out the confounding effect from the sibship size, birth interval, and birth order. Employing an instrumental variable approach and data from the Chinese Family Panel Studies, we find that girls with a brother are demonstrably shorter and report poorer health. This “brother's penalty” manifests even prenatally. Alternative explanations, such as birth order disadvantages, are carefully addressed and rul ..read more

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Abstract We investigate the effects of regulations governing the practice autonomy of dental hygienists on dental care use with the 2001–2014 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. We measure the strength of autonomy regulations by extending the Dental Hygiene Professional Practice Index to the years 2001–2014, allowing us to capture changes in regulations within states over time. Using a difference-in-differences framework applied to selected states, we find that relaxing supervision requirements to provide dental hygienists moderate autonomy results in an increase in total dental visits due to gr ..read more

Abstract This paper analyses the impact of a healthy food nudge intervention on purchases of 1590 customers of a supermarket chain's loyalty program in Uruguay through a randomized controlled trial. Nudges were presented in the form of messages sent through WhatsApp to customers three times a week for 8 weeks (between July and September 2020). Messages highlighted the benefits of cooking at home and eating mindfully and healthy (vegetables, fruits, healthy snacks, legumes, and fish), and included easy to implement tips. Results show that, on average, customers assigned to the treatment gr ..read more

Abstract By exploiting the development of special economic zones (SEZs) in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper evaluates how such zones affect infant mortality. Difference-in-differences analysis reveals that SEZs significantly decrease the local infant mortality rate, and the impact is larger for male infants and infants with less-educated mothers. Further studies show that the SEZs, which acts as an economic growth shock, improve infant survival by increasing the local income. Furthermore, there is no supportive evidence that the SEZs significantly alter either women's fertility ..read more

Abstract We study the welfare impacts of illness shocks on rural agricultural households in the semi-arid tropical and humid eastern regions of India. These regions are characterized by rainfed agriculture, missing markets for credit and insurance, and limited access to publicly funded healthcare infrastructure. We find that illness shocks increase households' medical expenditures and reduce wage income. However, aggregate non-medical, food, and non-food consumption expenditures are insensitive to illness shocks. Disaggregating illness by the age and the gender of the household members, we obs ..read more

Abstract We use a difference-in-differences design to study the effect of opioid use on traffic fatalities. Following Alpert et al., we focus on the 1996 introduction and marketing of OxyContin, and we examine its long-term impacts on traffic fatalities involving Schedule II drugs or heroin. Based on the national fatal vehicle crash database, we find that the states heavily targeted by the initial marketing of OxyContin (i.e., non-triplicate states) experienced 2.4 times more traffic fatalities (1.6 additional deaths per million individuals) involving Schedule II drugs or heroin during 20 ..read more

Abstract In this contribution to the longstanding risk theory debate on optimal self-protection, we aim to enrich the microeconomic modeling of self-protection, in the wake of Ehrlich and Becker (1972), by exploring the representation of risk perception at the core of the Health Belief Model (HBM), a conceptual framework extremely influential in Public Health studies (Janz and Becker, 1984). In our two-period model, we highlight the crucial role of risk perception in the individual decision to adopt a preventive behavior toward a generic health risk. We discuss the optimal prevention effort en ..read more

Abstract We causally analyzed whether being a member of the European Union (EU) and having access to a centralized marketing authorization procedure (centralized procedure [CP]) affects availability and time to launch of new pharmaceuticals. We employed multiple difference-in-differences models, exploiting the eastern enlargement of the EU as well as changes in the indications that fall within the compulsory or voluntary scope of the CP. Results showed that countries experienced a mean decrease in launch delay of 10.9 months (p = 0.004) after joining the EU. Effects were higher ..read more

Abstract The advent of the HIV/AIDS crisis transformed the desirability of committed heterosexual relationships. This paper employs a difference-in-differences approach to investigate the impact of the HIV/AIDS crisis on marriage rates. By using HIV/AIDS death rates as a proxy for HIV incidence, the study exploits county-level variations in HIV/AIDS mortality and finds that counties with higher HIV/AIDS death rates experienced larger gains in marriage rates in the early years of the epidemic. Estimates suggest that the virus increased marriage rates by approximately 0.9% in the early years of ..read more