All articles (excluded ExamDec2016)

Question 1

Dalgaard Strulik 2014

Answer 1

Optimal aging and death: Understanding the Preston Curve.
Biology is taken into account. Health activities improves the aging process.
Bad health -> big losses
Good health -> less loss

Question 2

Almond 2006

Answer 2

FOH.

Spanish Flu

Question 3

Alomond and Currie 2011a

Answer 3

FOH. 
Killing me softly 
Persistent
Latent
Fetal Programming

Question 4

Einav Finklstein 2011

Answer 4

Adverse selection and Moral Hazard.
A positive correlation between insurance coverage and (expected) cost at the insurance level is always a sign of adverse selection and/or moral hazard taking place at the specific market. A negative correlation between insurance coverage and (expected) cost at the insurance level is always a sign of advantageous selection taking place at the specific market. A negative sign would be consistent with advantageous selection, even in the presence of Moral Hazard.

Question 5

Black et al 2007

Answer 5

FOH. 
Norwegian data. Twins. 
From the Cradle to the labor market. 
The study finds that birth weight does tend to matter for long run outcomes. We can, if we belive in the model, generalize the twin study results to the population of singletons.
Long term and short term effects.

Question 6

Person and Rossin-Slater 2016

Answer 6

FOH.
Swedish data. Possible causal factor at a critical stage of human development: in utero exposure to maternal stress.
Analyze how a mother’s stress resulting from a death in the family during pregnancy affects her unborn child’s well-being from birth to adulthood, with a particular emphasis on the child’s mental health.
The paper shows that grief during pregnancies has both negative physical and metal health effects in the first live year of the child. Mental health conditions are detected even in adulthood.
Is the result of the paper consistent with the fetal origins hypothesis? That cannot be tested in this paper, as it would require data of the children when they reach higher ages, say, their 50s. The fetal origins hypothesis predicts that some effects will remain latent over the life-cycle and show up only later in life.

Question 7

Cutler 2006

Answer 7

Mortality determinants. 
Improved nutrition
Public Health
Urbanization
Vaccination
Medical Treatments
Fetal origins

Question 8

Attansio and Nielsen 2016

Answer 8

Mortality in UK vs. DK.
Inequality and Mortality.
Conclusion:
• Permanent income measures seem to fit the data better (even without controls)
• There is a non-linear relationship between annual income and mortality that PI seems to circumvent
• The mortality gradients in DK and the UK are similar when we use appropriate specifications. Hence, though the gradient exist in both countries, inequality per se is not relevant for determining mortality.

Question 9

Howard 2015

Answer 9

Pricing anticancer drugs

Question 10

Kremer 2002

Answer 10

Developing countries and pharma industry.

Question 11

Laird Nielsen 2016

Answer 11

Prescription rates in Aarhus and Kbh

Question 12

Pedersen 2005

Answer 12

Sentralisering of hospitals in Denmark

Question 13

Fadlon and Nielsen 2005

Answer 13

The death of the spouse can impose large financial burdens on the surviving family. Using three decades of administrative data, we show that widows experience significant income losses upon their husband’s death and we find that they compensate for these financial losses by increasing their labor market participation. This need for self-insurance, which we find even for older widows, suggests that more generous social insurance in the form of survivors’ benefits could improve welfare.

Question 14

Dobkin, Finklstein 2017

Answer 14

General idea: A health shock declines wages.