Trust in institutions affects vaccination campaign outcomes.

Background: Trust is an important driver of various outcomes, but little is known about whether trust in institutions affects actual vaccination campaign outcomes rather than only beliefs and intentions.

Methods: We used nationally representative, individual-level data for 114 countries and combined them with data on vaccination policies and rates. We measured the speed of the vaccination campaign for each country using the estimated growth rate of a Gompertz curve.

Association of Hypertension with Well-Being: Results from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) Study.

Introduction: It remains unclear how hypertension affects subjective well-being, especially in light of its potential gender-specific impacts.

Aim: In this study, we aimed to study the association between hypertension and subjective well-being and the potential gender differences in this relationship as well as mediating factors.

Methods: We use individual-level data from > 1 million Americans who participated in six waves of the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) survey.

Well-Being Inequality Among Adolescents and Young Adults.

Purpose: This study aimed to examine patterns of well-being across developmental stages and patterns of inequality in well-being among young adults and adolescents. Well-being exists when adolescents and young adults thrive and can achieve their full potential.

Methods: We used individual-level survey data from the Gallup World Poll from 164 countries between 2009 and 2017 (N = 446,934).

Global evidence of inequality in well-being among older adults.

Background: By 2030, the UN expects 1.4 billion older adults and 2.1 billion by 2050.

Air pollution and motor vehicle collisions in New York city.

Road traffic accidents are a pervasive feature of everyday life, killing 36,500 people, injuring 4.5 million and, overall, generating costs to the American society of $340 billion in 2019. Understanding the underlying factors can improve the design of prevention strategies.

Food insecurity predicts well-being inequality.

The concept of well-being offers researchers an alternative to understanding inequality and poverty primarily through income and consumption, and recent research has emphasized the importance of examining well-being inequality. Food insecurity has been identified as an important driver of average levels of well-being; in this paper, we show it also predicts changes in the distribution of well-being. We use individual-level data from the Gallup World Poll for 135 countries between 2014 and 2017 (N = 446,741) and apply a flexible moments-based approach.

Visual imagery skills and risk attitude.

Several of Kahneman and Tversky's seminal works in the 1970s found evidence of the importance of framing in decision making under risk. They hypothesized that imaginability (visual imagery ability) may play an important role in the evaluation of subjective probabilities. However, the impact of visual imagery ability on choice under risk has not yet been explored.

Violent crimes and homicide in New York City: The role of weather and pollution.

This paper studies the effect of weather and air pollution on violent crimes and homicide. We use all crimes committed in New York City between 2006 and 2020 and match each individual crime to the measures of the nearest weather, pollution station respectively. Our results show that neither weather nor pollutants have a contemporaneous effect of on homicide.

Lockdown design: which features of lockdowns are most important to COVID-19 experts?

Countries around the world, including New Zealand, have used lockdowns to slow the transmission of COVID-19. Reducing transmission depends crucially on people's compliance with lockdowns, which depends on, among other things, their design. We report on a Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) completed by 16 COVID-19 experts to discover how they feel about the relative importance (weight) of possible lockdown features in terms of how the features are experienced, independently of their effectiveness at controlling the pandemic.

Welfare and economic impacts of Fair Pay Agreements in Aotearoa.

This paper performs the first quantitative economic analysis of the proposed Fair Pay Agreement (FPA) and analyses the welfare (or wellbeing) implications and economic effects of the proposed FPA for Aotearoa New Zealand. The new FPA system is designed to address weaknesses of the labour market in Aotearoa. Using a standard dynamic macroeconomic model with labour market imperfections via search and matching frictions calibrated for Aotearoa New Zealand, we simulate the macroeconomic and welfare effects of the FPA.

Child health, human capital, and adult financial behavior.

This paper provides novel evidence that child health affects adult financial behavior, that is, risky asset market participation. We do so by using a longitudinal dataset with a rich set of covariates and exploit sibling fixed-effects (FE) to control for invariant unobserved heterogeneity. We begin by proposing a new mechanism working via skill formation and portfolio choice.

COVID-19, Food Insecurity, and Migration.

In this policy piece, we investigate the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-food-insecurity migration channel and develop a policy agenda. The interaction between COVID-19 and the drop in economic activity will lead to increased food insecurity within and across countries. Higher food insecurity may act as a multiplier for the epidemic due to its negative health effects and increased migration.