The effect of a nighttime curfew on the spread of COVID-19.

While nighttime curfews are less severe restrictions compared to around-the-clock curfews in mitigating the spread of Covid-19, they are nevertheless highly controversial, with the scarce literature on their effectiveness providing mixed evidence. We study the effectiveness of the nighttime curfew in Hamburg, Germany's second largest city, in mitigating the spread of Covid-19. This curfew forbid people from leaving their home between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m. for non-essential businesses. Applying both difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods, we find that the curfew was effective in reducing the number of Covid-19 cases. As it is unclear whether and how the virus will mutate in the next time, policy-makers might have to resort to non-pharmaceutical interventions again. Nighttime curfews should be kept in the toolbox of policy-makers to fight Covid-19.

Health effects of a ban on late-night alcohol sales.

This paper studies the impact of a ban on late-night off-premise alcohol sales between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. in Germany. We use three large administrative data sets: (i) German diagnosis related groups-Statistik, (ii) data from a large social health insurance, and (iii) Road Traffic Accident Statistics. Applying difference-in-differences and synthetic-control-group methods, we find that the ban had no effects on alcohol-related road casualties, but significantly reduced alcohol-related hospitalizations (doctor visits) among young people by around 9 (18) percent. The decrease is driven by fewer hospitalizations due to acute alcohol intoxication during the night-when the ban is in place-but not during the day.

Increased instruction time and stress-related health problems among school children.

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its effects on stress-related outpatient diagnoses from the universe of health claims data of the German Social Health Insurance. Exploiting the differential timing in the reform implementation across states, we show that the reform slightly increased stress-related health problems among school children. While increasing instruction time might increase student performance, it might have adverse effects in terms of additional stress.

The effect of unemployment on the smoking behavior of couples.

Although unemployment likely entails various externalities, research examining its spillover effects on spouses is scarce. This is the first paper to estimate effects of unemployment on the smoking behavior of both spouses. Using German Socio-Economic Panel data, we combine matching and difference-in-differences estimation, employing the post-double-selection method for control variable selection via Lasso regressions. One spouse's unemployment increases both spouses' smoking probability and intensity. Smoking relapses and decreased smoking cessation drive the effects. Effects are stronger if the partner already smokes and if the male partner becomes unemployed. Of several mechanisms discussed, we identify smoking to cope with stress as relevant.

The effect of unemployment on the mental health of spouses - evidence from plant closures in Germany.

Studies on health effects of unemployment usually neglect spillover effects on spouses. This study specifically investigates the effect of an individual's unemployment on the mental health of their spouse. In order to allow for causal interpretation of the estimates, it focuses on plant closure as entry into unemployment, and combines difference-in-difference and matching based on entropy balancing to provide robustness against observable and time-invariant unobservable heterogeneity. Using German Socio-Economic Panel Study data the paper reveals that unemployment decreases the mental health of spouses almost as much as for the directly affected individuals. The findings highlight that previous studies underestimate the public health costs of unemployment as they do not account for the potential consequences for spouses.