Research
Job Market Paper
Debt Repayment and the Slow Wealth Draw Down of Older Adults [PDF] [joint with Dr. Anson Ho, Prof. Dr. Barry Scholnick, and Dr. Kim Huynh]
Disclaimer: Tables and Figures will be available shortly, after approval from Data Provider
We provide causal evidence on the marginal propensity to repay debt (MPRD) of older adults. Our aim is to disentangle arguments from the literature explaining the slow draw down of wealth by older adults (that richer individuals are incentivised to increase wealth, and thus have a higher MPRD), from evidence of the MPRD of the general population (which finds that poorer individuals have a higher MPRD). We exploit a payment made by the Government of Canada to the universe of 73 and 74-year-olds, where the decision rule determining payment was the exact date of birth. Using RDD techniques and data from the universe of Canadian credit bureau files, we find that
MPRD for older adults varies across wealth and credit status.
Working Papers
Conditionally Accepted at the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Special Issue on Discrimination and Diversity.
This paper investigates the long-term effects of the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) on intimate partner violence (IPV). The identification relies on a novel historical dataset which uses the distance from municipalities to military camps during the war together with military camp sizes to proxy the impact of the war across eastern Paraguay. The likelihood of IPV occurring today is 5.54 percent higher than average in municipalities which were more heavily affected by the war. Consistent with relative improvements in female labour participation and human capital posing a threat to the male breadwinner role within the household, I present evidence that reducing the gender differences in the labour market and in human capital accumulation after the war increases the long term likelihood of IPV. As non-gender-based types of interpersonal violence are, in the long-run, unaffected, I conclude that gender norms caused by the war enabled IPV. I argue that female empowerment is a multifaceted phenomenon where some dimensions, in this case IPV, have greater influence than others.
Working Paper Series: ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research, HCHE- Hamburg Center for Health Economics
The contemporaneous healthcare cost of particulate matter pollution [PDF] [with Dr. Melisa Williams, Dr. Jesse Matheson, Dr. David Jenkins, and Prof. Marco Oggioni]
Resubmitted to the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
This paper estimates the impact of particulate matter pollutants, measured by PM10 levels, on public healthcare costs for youth and older adult populations. To do this, we use administrative data from a large UK hospital and exploit spatial and temporal variation in PM10 levels. We find that patient enrolment increases when their neighbourhood experiences higher levels of PM10. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in PM10 levels increases the enrolment of patients age 60 years and older by 6.2%, and the enrolment of patients under 18 years of age by 3.1%. Using detailed costing information, we calculate that a standard deviation increase in PM10 increases
public healthcare costs by £873, 985.20 per year.