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This paper proposes a test for the existence and the degree of contagious presenteeism and negative externalities in sickness insurance schemes. First, we theoretically decompose moral hazard into shirking and contagious presenteeism behavior. Then we derive testable conditions for reduced shirking, increased presenteeism, and the level of overall moral hazard when benefits are cut. We implement the test empirically exploiting German sick pay reforms and administrative industry-level data on certified sick leave by diagnoses. The labor supply adjustment for contagious diseases is significantly smaller than for non-contagious diseases, providing evidence for contagious presenteeism and negative externalities which arise in form of infections.

This paper comprehensively studies the health effects of Daylight Saving Time (DST) regulation. Relying on up to 3.4 million BRFSS respondents from the US and the universe of 160 million hospital admissions from Germany over one decade, we do not find much evidence that population health significantly decreases when clocks are set forth by one hour in spring. However, when clocks are set back by one hour in fall, effectively extending sleep duration for the sleep deprived by one hour, population health slightly improves for about four days. The most likely explanation for the asymmetric effects are behavioral adjustments by marginal people in spring.

This paper develops a conceptual framework that can explain why economic development goes along with increases in body weight and obesity rates. We first introduce the concept of novelty consumption, which refers to an increase in food availability due to trade or innovation. Then we study how novel food products alter the optimal consumption bundle and welfare, and possibly lead to changes in body weight. We test our model employing the German reunification as a fast motion natural experiment of economic development. Our data elicit detailed information on East Germans' food consumption, body mass, and diet-related health. After the fall of the Wall, East Germans permanently changed their diet by consuming novel western food products. A significant population share permanently gained weight. This is consistent with our theoretical framework where past affects current consumption, and where novel goods determine consumption changes over time with ambiguous effects on diet-related health.

In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of worker investment in safety. Standard theory assumes that injury risk is exogenous. It predicts that riskier jobs are associated with higher wages. In contrast, in our model, workers make individual safety investments that reduce the risk of injury. This results in a negative association between individual injury risk and wages. We test the model's predictions using obesity as a proxy for worker disinvestments in human capital and safety. In line with our model predictions, we find a significant positive compensating wage differential (CWD) for nonfatal risk at the occupational level. At the same time, however, there exists an underlying significant negative association between individual accident risk and wages, but only in high risk occupations. The latter relationship may downward bias or mask CWD estimates.

This paper studies the long‐term impact of societal socialization on values using the example of doping behavior in sports. We apply the German Reunification Approach to the microcosm of Berlin and exploit its 40‐year long division into a capitalist and a communist sector. We deliberately chose attitudes toward doping to test the impact of ideology on values since (i) post‐1989 disappointed economic hopes did not confound doping attitudes, and because of (ii) the systematic GDR state doping activities that became public in reunified Germany in the 1990s. Our findings demonstrate that even after half the time the division lasted, e.g. 20 years after the reunification, differences in convictions continue to persist. Personal extramural sports experience and age are equally strong predictors of individual attitudes and beliefs, especially in interaction with ideological socialization.

Health Plan Choice Abstract: This paper provides field evidence on (a) how price framing affects consumers’ decision to switch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurance can be influenced by policymakers through simple regulatory efforts. In 2009, in order to foster competition among health insurance companies, German federal regulation required health insurance companies to express price differences between health plans in absolute Euro values rather than percentage point payroll tax differences. Using individual-level panel data, as well as aggregated health plan-level panel data, we find that the reform led to a sixfold increase in an individual’s switching probability and a threefold demand elasticity increase.

The health risks of the current COVID-19 pandemic, together with the drastic mitigation measures taken in many affected nations, pose an obvious threat to public mental health. The social science literature has already established a clear link between mental health and sociodemographic as well as economic factors; at the same time, a growing number of studies investigate the role of biased risk perceptions. To assess this role in the context of COVID-19, this study first implements survey-based measures of health perception biases among Chinese adults during the pandemic. Then, it analyzes their relation to three mental health outcomes: life satisfaction, happiness, and depression (as measured by the CES − D). We show that the health overconfidence displayed by approximately 30% of the survey respondents is a clear risk factor for mental health problems; it is a statistically significant predictor of depression and low levels of happiness and life satisfaction. We also document that these effects are stronger in regions that experienced higher numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our results also offer clear guidelines for the implementation of effective interventions to temper health overconfidence, particularly in uncontrollable situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper develops a dynamic model to illustrate how diet and body weight change when novel food products become available to consumers. We propose a microfounded test to empirically discriminate between habit and taste formation in intertemporal preferences. Moreover, we show that ‘novelty consumption’ and endogenous preferences can explain the persistent correlation between economic development and obesity. By empirically studying the German reunification, we find that East Germans consumed more novel Western food and gained more weight than West Germans when a larger variety of food products became readily accessible after the fall of the Wall. The observed consumption patterns suggest that food consumption features habit formation.