We investigate long-run effects of World War II on socioeconomic status and health of older individuals in Europe. We analyze data from SHARELIFE, a retrospective survey conducted as part of SHARE in ...Europe in 2009. SHARELIFE provides detailed data on events in childhood during and after the war for over 20,000 individuals in thirteen European countries. We construct several measures of war exposure: experience of dispossession, persecution, combat in local areas, and hunger periods. Exposure to war and, more important, to individual-level shocks caused by the war significantly predicts economic and health outcomes at older ages.
Although there is a large gap between Black and White American life expectancies, the gap fell 48.9% between 1990 and 2018, mainly due to mortality declines among Black Americans. We examine ...age-specific mortality trends and racial gaps in life expectancy in high- and low-income US areas and with reference to six European countries. Inequalities in life expectancy are starker in the United States than in Europe. In 1990, White Americans and Europeans in high-income areas had similar overall life expectancy, while life expectancy for White Americans in low-income areas was lower. However, since then, even high-income White Americans have lost ground relative to Europeans. Meanwhile, the gap in life expectancy between Black Americans and Europeans decreased by 8.3%. Black American life expectancy increased more than White American life expectancy in all US areas, but improvements in lower-income areas had the greatest impact on the racial life expectancy gap. The causes that contributed the most to Black Americans' mortality reductions included cancer, homicide, HIV, and causes originating in the fetal or infant period. Life expectancy for both Black and White Americans plateaued or slightly declined after 2012, but this stalling was most evident among Black Americans even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. If improvements had continued at the 1990 to 2012 rate, the racial gap in life expectancy would have closed by 2036. European life expectancy also stalled after 2014. Still, the comparison with Europe suggests that mortality rates of both Black and White Americans could fall much further across all ages and in both high-income and low-income areas.
The role of trust in promoting economic activity and societal development has received considerable academic attention by social scientists. A popular way to measure trust at the individual level is ...the so-called “investment game” (
Berg et al., 1995). It has been widely noted, however, that risk attitudes can also affect decisions in this game, and thus in principle confound inferences about trust. We provide novel evidence shedding light on the role of risk attitudes for trusting decisions. To the best of our knowledge our data are the first rigorous evidence that (i) aggregate investment distributions differ significantly between trust and risk environments, and (ii) risk attitudes predict individual investment decisions in risk games but not in the corresponding trust games. Our results are convergent evidence that trust decisions are not tightly connected to a person's risk attitudes, and they lend support to the “trust” interpretation of decisions in investment games.
•Recall and diary food expenditure data, collected on the same sample, are compared.•Measurement error in recall food expenditure data is substantial.•Measurement error in recall food expenditure is ...negatively correlated with the true values.•Diary records are imperfect and affected by infrequency and diary exhaustion.
Recall food expenditure data, which is the basis of a great deal of empirical work, is believed to suffer from considerable measurement error. Diary records are believed to be more accurate. We study an unusual data set that collects recall and diary data from the same households and so allows a direct comparison of the two methods of data collection. The diary data imply measurement errors in recall food expenditure data that are substantial, and which do not have the properties of classical measurement error. However, we also present evidence that the diary measures are themselves imperfect.
We investigate long-run effects of hunger episodes experienced during childhood on health status and behavioural outcomes in later life. We combine self-reported data on hunger experiences from ...SHARELIFE with administrative data on food supply (caloric rations) in post-war Germany. The data suggest that individual behaviour is a pathway between early life-shocks and adult health. We find that lower-income adults who experienced hunger spend a larger fraction of income on food. Taken together, our results confirm that in addition to the well-documented biological channel from early life circumstances to adult health, there are also behavioural pathways.
Purpose
A fully electrified transport chain offers considerable potential for CO
2
savings. In this paper, we examine the conditions necessary to introduce a fully electrified, large-scale, ...high-speed rail freight transport system in Europe in addition to high-speed passenger trains, aiming to shift goods transport from road to rail. We compare a novel high-speed rail freight concept with road-based lorry transport for low-density high value goods to estimate the potential for a modal shift from road to rail in 2030.
Methods
To characterize the impacts of different framework conditions, a simulation tool was designed as a discrete choice model, based on random utility theory, with integrated performance calculation assessing the full multimodal transport chain regarding costs, emissions and time. It was applied to a European reference scenario based on forecast data for freight traffic in 2030.
Results
We show that high-speed rail freight is about 70% more expensive than the conventional lorry but emits 80% less CO
2
emissions for the baseline parameter setting. The expected mode share largely depends on the cargo’s value of time, while the implementation of a CO
2
-tax of 100 EUR/tCO
2
eq has an insignificant impact. The costs of handling goods and the infrastructure charges are highly influential variables.
Conclusion
High-speed rail track access charges are a suitable political instrument to create a level playing field between the transport modes and internalize external costs of freight transport. With the given access charge structure, a reduction of the maximum operating speed to 160 km/h has a positive impact on the expected mode share of rail transport while it still reacts positively to a wide range of the cargo’s time sensitivity (compared to a maximum operating speed of 350 km/h). The flexibility of rail freight’s operating speed is important for an effective implementation. Further research should concentrate on time- and cost-efficient transhipment terminals as they have a significant impact on transport performance.
Interviewer effects and the measurement of financial literacy Crossley, Thomas F.; Schmidt, Tobias; Tzamourani, Panagiota ...
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A, Statistics in society,
January 2021, 2021-01-01, 20210101, Letnik:
184, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
In this paper, we ask whether interviewers influence the answers to a standard set of survey questions on financial literacy. We study data from Germany's wealth survey, the Panel on Household ...Finances (PHF). We have access to extensive auxiliary data, including interviewer identifiers, background characteristics of interviewers and measures of interviewer activity through the survey. We find that interviewer effects explain a significant fraction of the variance of the financial literacy score, and intra‐interviewer correlations are notably larger for the financial literacy score than for other survey variables. We explore how accounting for interviewer effects can improve estimates of the effects of financial literacy on financial behaviours and outcomes.
Rules of Thumb in Life-cycle Saving Decisions Winter, Joachim K.; Schlafmann, Kathrin; Rodepeter, Ralf
The Economic journal (London),
20/May , Letnik:
122, Številka:
560
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
We analyse life-cycle saving decisions when households use simple heuristics, or rules of thumb, rather than solve the underlying intertemporal optimisation problem. We simulate life-cycle saving ...decisions using three simple rules and compute utility losses relative to the solution of the optimisation problem. Our simulations suggest that utility losses induced by following simple decision rules are relatively low. Moreover, the two main saving motives reflected by the canonical life-cycle model — long-run consumption smoothing and short-run insurance against income shocks — can be addressed quite well by saving rules that do not require computationally demanding tasks, such as backwards induction.
Stock market expectations of Dutch households Hurd, Michael; Van Rooij, Maarten; Winter, Joachim
Journal of applied econometrics,
April/May 2011, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Despite its importance for the analysis of life cycle behavior and, in particular, retirement planning, stock ownership by private households is poorly understood. Among other approaches to ...investigate this puzzle, recent research has started to elicit private households' expectations of stock market returns. This paper reports findings from a study that collected data over a 2-year period both on households' stock market expectations (subjective probabilities of gains or losses) and on whether they own stocks. We document substantial heterogeneity in financial market expectations. Expectations are correlated with stock ownership. Over the 2 years of our data stock market prices increased and expectations of future stock market price changes also increased, lending support to the view that expectations are influenced by recent stock gains or losses.
The approval of an entirely subcutaneous implantable-cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) system (S-ICD) has raised attention about this promising technology. It was developed to overcome lead failure ...and infection problems of conventional transvenous ICD systems. Nevertheless, lead migration of the initial design and inappropriate shock rates have raised concerns regarding its reliability and safety.
The purpose of this study was to report the largest multicenter series to date of patients with the new device in comparison with a matched conventional transvenous ICD collective with focus on perioperative complications, conversion of induced ventricular fibrillation (VF), and short-term follow-up.
Sixty-nine patients (50 male and 19 female; mean age 45.7 ± 15.7 years) received an S-ICD in three German centers and were randomly assigned to 69 sex- and age-matched conventional ICD patients. The indication was primary prevention in 41 patients (59.4%) without difference between groups (34 control patients; P = .268). The predominant underlying heart disease was ischemic cardiomyopathy in 11 (15.9%), dilated cardiomyopathy in 25 (36.2%), and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in 10 (14.5%) in the S-ICD group. Mean implantation time was 70.8 ± 27.9 minutes (P = .398). Conversion rates of induced VF were 89.5% for 65 J (15-J safety margin) and 95.5% including reversed shock polarity (15-J safety margin) in the study group. Termination of induced VF was successful in 90.8% (10-J safety margin, device dependent) of the control patients (P = .815). Procedural complications were similar between the 2 groups. Mean follow-up was 217 ± 138 days. During follow-up, 3 patients with S-ICD were appropriately treated for ventricular arrhythmias. Three inappropriate episodes (5.2%) occurred in 3 S-ICD patients due to T-wave oversensing, whereas atrial fibrillation with rapid conduction was the predominant reason for inappropriate therapy in conventional devices (P = .745).
The novel S-ICD system can be implanted safely with similar perioperative adverse events compared with standard transvenous devices. Our case-control study demonstrates a 10.4% failure of conversion of induced VF with the S-ICD set to standard polarity and 15-J safety margin and comparable inappropriate shock rates during short-term follow-up.
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