Lockdown strictness and mental health effects among older populations in Europe.

This paper investigates whether lockdown policies aggravated mental health problems of older populations (50 and over) in Europe during the first COVID-19 wave. Using data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE COVID-19 questionnaire) and from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker for 17 countries, we estimate the causal effect of lockdown policies on mental health by combining cross-country variability in the strictness of the policies with cross-individual variability in face-to-face contacts prior to the pandemic. We find that lockdown policies worsened insomnia, anxiety, and depression by 5, 7.2 and 5.1 percentage points, respectively. This effect was stronger for women and those aged between 50 and 65. Interestingly, lockdown policies notably damaged the mental health of healthy populations. We close with a discussion of lockdown policies targeted at individuals above 65 and/or with pre-existing conditions.

Hidden figures behind two-vehicle crashes: An assessment of the risk and external costs of drunk driving in Spain.

In this paper, we estimate the relative risk that drunk drivers pose on sober drivers, passengers and pedestrians, and quantify the external cost of drunk driving in Spain between 2004-2015. Eventually we arrive at the following conclusions. Firstly, we find the relative risk of drunk drivers causing a crash during the night to be between 2.7-3.9 times higher than that of sober drivers. Secondly, our results point to a decline in drunk driving offences alongside an increase in its punition, mainly after the implementation of the Penalty Points System for driving licenses in Spain on July 1st 2006. We estimate that drunk drivers should be fined by 1250€, in order to offset its external costs. Overall, our assessment indicates a downturn in the external costs of drunk driving over the last decade in Spain.