Essays in Health Economics

• Department of Economics

PhD thesis defence by Chiara Serra.

In Chapter 1 (with Simone Ferro and Alessandro Palma) I document a significant positive impact of prenatal exposure to moderate levels of PM on early life consumption of pharmaceuticals and hospitalisations.

Chapter 2 shows that ED patients arriving just after a shift change have a lower probability of being assigned a higher priority. I employ this quasi-experimental variation to investigate immediate and longer-term consequences of waiting-time.

In Chapter 3 (joint with Simone Ferro) I investigate the role of weather on the spread of Sars-CoV-2 in the US taking into account the endogenous response of social activity. We find that social behaviour substantially mitigates the effect of temperature in curbing infections. 

In Chapter 4 (joint with Gabriel Facchini and Matilde Machado) I show that cesarean-sections are more likely when maternity-wards are more crowded and employ this variation to document a positive impact of cesarean-section on early-life consumption of pharmaceuticals.