The heterogeneity in immigrants unhealthy assimilation

Immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart however such advantage erodes over time. In this paper, we study the heterogeneity of such unhealthy behaviours assimilation among different arrival cohorts. We focus our analysis on binge drinking and cigarette consumption as a proxy for unhealthy behaviour assimilation by immigrants. Regarding binge drinking we show that more recent immigrant cohorts arrive with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster "unhealthy assimilation" in terms of increased consumption of alcohol and an increase in the probability of starting to drink over guideline on a daily basis. Such assimilation is less pronounced for smoking habits, in fact both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates. However, such health advantage is decreasing with time spent in the US

Body Weight, Dieting and Obesity Traps

This paper presents a theoretical investigation into why losing weight is so difficult even in the absence of rational addiction, time-inconsistent preferences or bounded rationality. We add to the existing literature by focusing on the role that individual metabolism has on weight loss. The results from the theoretical model provides multiple steady states and a threshold revealing a situation of ''obesity traps" that the individual must surpass in order to successfully lose weight. Given such a threshold we investigate if a short-run incentive scheme for weight loss is able to promote persistent weight-losses and what features an incentive scheme should have in order to sustain permanent weight loss. We find that a lump-sum incentive scheme is not always able to lead the individual to permanent weight loss. On the contrary, a non-decreasing incentive scheme with rewards for weight loss according to levels of body weight (i.e. progressive), is able to sustain a steady state reduction in body weight and food consumption

When in America, do as the Americans? Exploring the heterogeneity in immigrants unhealthy assimilation

It is a well-established result that immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart and that such advantage erodes over time. In this paper, following Giuntella and Stella (2016), we intend to study if such assimilation might be heterogeneous not only for different arrival cohorts but also for different unhealthy behaviors. To do so we focus on the assimilation of two unhealthy behaviors: binge drinking and cigarette consumption. For binge drinking we show that more recent immigrant cohorts arrive in the US with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster assimilation in terms of increased consumption of alcohol and an increase in the probability of consuming alcohol over daily guideline. On the contrary smoking assimilation is less pronounced. Both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates, although such health advantage decreases with time spent in the US. These results shows that there is indeed heterogeneity in the assimilation of unhealthy behaviors for American immigrants, which are more at risk of assimilating alcohol consumption rather than smoking habits from natives

When in America, do as the Americans? Exploring the heterogeneity in immigrants unhealthy assimilation

It is a well-established that immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart and that such advantage erodes over time. In this paper we study the heterogeneity of such assimilation across different arrival cohorts and unhealthy behaviors. To do so we focus on the assimilation of: cigarette and alcohol consumption. Our theoretical predictions show that assimilation depends on social exposure and taste for consumption. Empirical results show that for binge drinking more recent immigrant cohorts arrive in the US with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster assimilation as time passes. On the contrary for smoking habits both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates, although such health advantage decreases with time spent in the US. These results show that there is indeed heterogeneity in the assimilation of unhealthy behaviors for American immigrants. Drinking habits assimilation start in the country of origin and continues as immigrants interacts with natives' habits; while for smoking healthier country of origin healthier habits are preserved in time, but immigrants struggle to maintain their health advantage as they interacts with natives

When in America, do as the Americans? Exploring the heterogeneity in immigrants unhealthy assimilation

It is a well-established that immigrants upon their arrival in the United States are in better health condition with respect to their American counterpart and that such advantage erodes over time. In this paper we study the heterogeneity of such assimilation across different arrival cohorts and unhealthy behaviors. To do so we focus on the assimilation of: cigarette and alcohol consumption. Our theoretical predictions show that assimilation depends on social exposure and taste for consumption. Empirical results show that for binge drinking more recent immigrant cohorts arrive in the US with a higher probability of being binge drinker and experience a faster assimilation as time passes. On the contrary for smoking habits both earlier and later arrival cohorts report lower smoking rates, although such health advantage decreases with time spent in the US. These results show that there is indeed heterogeneity in the assimilation of unhealthy behaviors for American immigrants. Drinking habits assimilation start in the country of origin and continues as immigrants interacts with natives' habits; while for smoking healthier country of origin healthier habits are preserved in time, but immigrants struggle to maintain their health advantage as they interacts with natives

Ride Your Luck! A Field Experiment on Lottery-based Incentives for Compliance

We designed a natural-field experiment in the context of local public transportation to test whether rewards in the form of lottery prizes coupled with traditional sanctions efficiently reduce free-riding. We organized a lottery in a medium-size Italian city the participation in which is linked to purchasing an on-board bus ticket. The lottery was then implemented in half of otherwise identical buses operating in the municipality. Our theoretical model shows that the introduction of the lottery generates an increase in the number of tickets sold and that it is possible to design a self-financing lottery. To estimate the effect of the lottery's introduction on the amount of tickets sold, we matched and compared treated and control buses operating on the same day on the exact same route. The results show that buses participating in the lottery sold significantly more tickets than the control buses. The increase in revenue from the tickets sold was more than the lottery prize amount

Let Young People Join The Legislative Process. A Twitter Based Experiment On Internships

The aim of this research is to examine the possible effects of labour market institutional characteristics on young people's perceptions of their internship experiences as expressed on Twitter. By looking at these opinions (satisfaction versus dissatisfaction) in relation to certain features of internships as well as to the more general labour market regulatory framework, this project aims to give a voice to young people, enabling them (indirectly) to provide policy suggestions to law-makers. Furthermore, we propose a preview of a possible empirical model for data collection based on the manual coding of Tweets. By employing a Probit regression and Blinder-Oaxaca and Fairlie decompositions, we have tried to establish a link between the perceived evaluation of internships and the country where the internship is based, the latter being used as a proxy for the legal system. In all our tests we found that the country in which the internship is placed is the main factor in the positive or negative perception. Ultimately we shall propose the use of Twitter not only as a relevant research tool, but also as an instrument for bringing young people's needs to the attention of law-makers

Ride Your Luck! A Field Experiment on Lottery-Based Incentives for Compliance

In a field experiment, we studied the performance of an incentive scheme that combines a lottery-based reward for compliance with probabilistic sanctions for noncompliance. For one month, bus passengers who purchased a ticket on board a subset of buses operating in a medium-sized Italian city participated in a lottery awarding a \u20ac500 prize. The remaining buses\u2014otherwise identical\u2014were used as controls. We observed the amount of tickets sold on treated and control buses over three months, before, during, and after the introduction of the lottery. Results show that treated buses sold significantly more on-board tickets than control buses during the lottery period. In our setup, the estimated extra revenues from the ticket sales caused by the introduction of the lottery fell short of the amount of the total prizes raffled off. However, the incentive scheme proved cost-effective because not all the lottery prizes were claimed by winners

Essays in Health Economics

In the first chapter we develop a theoretical model investigating food consumption and body weight with a novel assumption regarding human caloric expenditure (i.e. metabolism), in order to investigate why individuals can be rationally trapped in an excessive weight equilibrium and why they struggle to lose weight even when offered incentives for weight-loss. This assumption allows the theoretical model to have multiple equilibria and to provide an explanation for why losing weight is so difficult even in the presence of incentives, without relying on rational addiction, time-inconsistency preferences or bounded rationality. In addition to this result we are able to characterize under which circumstances a temporary incentive can create a persistent weight loss. In the second chapter we investigate the possible contributions that social norms and peer effects had on the spread of obesity. In recent literature peer effects and social norms have been characterized as important pathways for the biological and behavioral spread of body weight, along with decreased food prices and physical activity. We add to this literature by proposing a novel concept of social norm related to what we define as social distortion in weight perception. The theoretical model shows that, in equilibrium, the effect of an increase in peers' weight on i's weight is unrelated to health concerns while it is mainly associated with social concerns. Using regional data from England we prove that such social component is significant in influencing individual weight. In the last chapter we investigate the relationship between body weight and employment probability. Using a semi-parametric regression we show that men and women employment probability do not follow a linear relationship with body mass index (BMI) but rather an inverted U-shaped one, peaking at a BMI way over the clinical threshold for overweight