Dhaval Dave

Dhaval Dave
Bentley University · Department of Economics

About

144
Publications
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4,851
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Publications

Publications (144)
Article
Objective This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the U.S. on positive parenting‐related outcomes and potential pathways. Background The 1996 welfare reform legislation sharply restricted eligibility for benefits with a strong emphasis on employment over cash assistance. The legislation led to dramatic declines in welfare caseload...
Article
Full-text available
This case-control study uses state-by-year workplace injury data to assess recreational marijuana legalization adoption and workplace injuries among younger workers aged 20 to 34 years.
Article
This study investigates the effects of welfare reform—a major policy shift in the United States that increased low-income mothers' employment and reliance on earnings instead of cash assistance—on the quality of the home environments mothers provide for their preschool-age children. Using empirical methods designed to identify plausibly causal effe...
Article
The imposition and lifting of COVID‐19 lockdown orders were among the most heatedly debated policies during the pandemic. Credible empirical evaluations of the effects of reopening policies are difficult because policymakers often explicitly linked sustained reductions in COVID‐19 cases to the lifting of lockdown orders. This hardwired policy endog...
Article
Public health experts caution that legalization of recreational marijuana may normalize smoking and undermine the decades-long achievements of tobacco control policy. However, very little is known about the impact of recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) on adult tobacco use. Using newly available data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Hea...
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This case-control study investigates the association of the US Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v Wade with mental distress among female individuals of reproductive age.
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This paper explores a missing link in the literature on welfare reform in the U.S.—the effects on positive health and social behaviors of adolescents, who represent the next generation of potential welfare recipients. Previous research on welfare reform and adolescents has focused almost exclusively on negative behaviors and found that welfare refo...
Article
Over the past decade, rising youth use of e-cigarettes and other electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) has contributed to aggressive regulation by state and local governments. Between 2010 and mid-2019, ten states and two large counties adopted ENDS taxes. We use two large national surveys (Monitoring the Future and the Youth Risk Behavior Su...
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This study is the first to explore the impact of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot on risk avoidance behavior and the spread of COVID-19. First, using anonymized smartphone data from SafeGraph, Inc., and an event-study approach, we document a substantial increase on January 6 in non-resident smartphone pings at the sites of the protest: the Ellipse,...
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Since at least the early 1990s, economists have found substantial evidence of “job lock” in the United States: workers who get health insurance from their employer are less likely to switch jobs. Early work showed stronger job lock among groups that place a higher value on health insurance, whereas more recent work has focused on measuring the effe...
Article
The recent lead-in-water crisis in Newark has renewed concerns about the crisis being a widespread problem in the nation. Using data on the exact home addresses of pregnant women residing in the city combined with information on the spatial boundary separating areas within the city serviced by two water treatment plants, we exploit an exogenous cha...
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In the midst of mass COVID-19 vaccination distribution efforts in the U.S. Texas became the first state to abolish its mask mandate and fully lift capacity constraints for all businesses, effective on March 10, 2021. Proponents claimed that the reopening would generate short-run employment growth and signal a return to normal while opponents argued...
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We provide some of the first empirical evidence of maternal and fetal health effects of working during pregnancy by using a unique dataset from the New Jersey Department of Health that includes information not only on pregnancy and birth outcomes but also on maternal employment. We match the mother’s occupation with the Metabolic Equivalent of Task...
Article
This study estimates the effects of welfare reform in the 1990s, which permanently restructured and contracted the cash assistance system in the U.S., on food insecurity—a fundamental form of material hardship—of the next generation of households. An implicit goal underlying welfare reform was the disruption of an assumed intergenerational transmis...
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This case-control study assesses if announcements of cash drawings in 19 states were associated with increased vaccine uptake by comparing vaccination trends in states that announced drawings with states that did not using a difference-in-differences framework.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deem large indoor gatherings without social distancing the "highest risk" activity for COVID-19 contagion. On June 20, 2020, President Donald J. Trump held his first mass campaign rally following the US coronavirus outbreak at the indoor Bank of Oklahoma arena. In the weeks following the event, n...
Article
We investigate how welfare reform in the U.S. in the 1990s shaped the age gradient in women’s property crime arrests. Using Federal Bureau of Investigation data, we investigated the age-patterning of effects of welfare reform on women’s arrests for property crime, the type of crime that welfare reform has been shown to affect. We found that welfare...
Article
We study the effects of prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs) on crime, and inform how policies that restrict access to Rx opioids per se within the healthcare system would impact broader non‐health domains. In response to the substantial increase in opioid use and misuse in the United States, PDMPs have been implemented in virtually all st...
Article
A shelter‐in‐place order (SIPO) is one of the most restrictive non‐pharmaceutical interventions designed to curb the spread of COVID‐19. On March 19, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued the first statewide SIPO in the United States. The order closed non‐essential businesses and required residents to shelter in place for all but essential...
Article
Aims To estimate the association of e‐cigarette advertisement exposure with e‐cigarette and cigarette use behavior among US adults. Design Data from the 2013–14 National Adult Tobacco Survey (NATS) were linked to Kantar Media and National Consumer Study data to construct measures of e‐cigarette advertisements on TV and in magazines. The relationsh...
Article
Large in‐person gatherings of travelers who do not socially distance are classified as the “highest risk” for COVID‐19 spread by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From August 7–16, 2020, nearly 500,000 motorcycle enthusiasts converged on Sturgis, South Dakota for its annual rally in an environment without mask‐wearing requiremen...
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One of the most common policy prescriptions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 has been to legally enforce social distancing through shelter-in-place orders (SIPOs). This study examines the role of localized urban SIPO policy in curbing COVID-19 cases. Specifically, we explore (i) the comparative effectiveness of county-level SIPOs in urbanized as co...
Article
Shelter in place orders (SIPOs) require residents to remain home for all but essential activities. Between March 19 and April 20, 2020, 40 states and the District of Columbia adopted SIPOs. This study explores the impact of SIPOs on health, with particular attention to heterogeneity in their impacts. First, using daily state‐level social distancing...
Article
This study investigates effects of welfare reform in the United States on the next generation. Most previous studies of effects of welfare reform on adolescents focused on high‐school dropout of girls or fertility; little is known about how welfare reform has affected other teenage behaviors or boys. We use a difference‐in‐difference‐in‐differences...
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E-cigarettes provide nicotine in a vapor form, which is considered less harmful than the smoke from combustible cigarettes because it does not contain the toxins that are found in tobacco smoke. E-cigarettes may be effective in helping smokers to quit or they might simply provide smokers a method of bypassing smoking restrictions. There is very lit...
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We study the impact of new information on people’s perceptions of the risks of e-cigarettes. In September 2019 the U.S. experienced an outbreak of e-cigarette, or vaping, associated lung injuries (EVALI). The EVALI outbreak created an information shock, which was followed by additional new information in a later CDC recommendation. We use data on c...
Article
The minimum wage has increased in multiple states over the past three decades and it continues to be a controversial policy. Most prior research has examined the effect of the minimum wage on employment and wages. In this study, we examine the impact of the state minimum wage on infant health. Using data on the universe of births in the U.S. over 2...
Article
We provide the first causal evidence on whether e-cigarette advertising on television and in magazines encourages adult smokers to quit. We find the answer to be yes for TV advertising but no for magazine advertising. Our results indicate that a policy banning TV advertising of e-cigs would have reduced the number of smokers who quit in the recent...
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Despite plausible mechanisms, little research has evaluated potential changes in health behaviors in response to expansions in public insurance coverage of the 1980s and 1990s targeted at low-income families. In this paper, we provide the first national study of the effects of Medicaid expansions on health behaviors for pregnant women, which is a g...
Article
The WHO views obesity as a significant risk to population health. Evidence suggests that obesity reduces labor-market attachment, worker productivity, and earnings. This link at the micro level may translate into adverse effects on economic growth at the macro level. Few studies have evaluated how body mass index impacts economic growth across and...
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We use difference‐in‐differences models and individual‐level data from the national and state Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System from 2005 to 2015 to examine the effects of e‐cigarette minimum legal sale age (MLSA) laws on youth cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and marijuana use. Our results suggest that these laws increased youth smoki...
Article
Despite the significant cost of prescription (Rx) drug abuse and calls from policymakers for effective interventions, there is limited research on the effects of policies intended to limit such abuse. This study estimates the effects of prescription drug monitoring (PDMP) programs, which constitute a key policy targeting access to non‐medical use o...
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One goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to enable entrepreneurship by increasing access to non-employer-based health insurance. We evaluate the extent to which the ACA was successful at this, providing some of the first estimates of the effect of the main provisions of the ACA on entrepreneurship. We are the first to focus specifically on old...
Article
We examine the first‐order internal effects of unemployment and nonemployment on a range of health behaviors during the most recent recession using longitudinal data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth‐1979. Ours is the first study to analyze the effect of own‐unemployment on energy intake, energy e...
Article
This study exploits differences in the implementation of welfare reform in the United States across states and over time to identify causal effects of maternal work incentives, and by inference employment, on youth arrests between 1988 and 2005, the period of time during which welfare reform unfolded. We consider both serious and minor crimes as cl...
Article
The public health costs of tobacco consumption have been documented to be substantially larger than those of marijuana use. This study is the first to investigate the impact of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) on tobacco cigarette consumption. First, using data from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), we establish that MMLs induce a 2...
Article
This study exploits differences in the implementation of welfare reform in the United States across states and over time to identify causal effects of maternal work incentives, and by inference employment, on youth arrests between 1988 and 2005, the period of time during which welfare reform unfolded. We consider both serious and minor crimes as cl...
Article
We examine how the Affordable Care Act's dependent coverage mandate (DCM) affected young adults' time allocation. Exploiting more accurate measures from the American Time Use Surveys, we find that the DCM reduced labor supply. The question then arises, what have these adults done with the extra time? Estimates suggest a reduction in job-lock, as we...
Chapter
This study investigates the effects of a broad-based policy change that altered maternal employment, family income, and other family characteristics on drug-related crime among youth. Specifically, we exploit differences in the implementation of welfare reform in the United States across states and over time in the attempt to identify causal effect...
Article
Objectives: To estimate the impact of tobacco cessation on household spending on non-tobacco goods in the USA. Methods: Using 2006-2015 Consumer Expenditure Survey data, 9130 tobacco-consuming households were followed for four quarters. Households were categorised during the fourth quarter as having: (1) recent tobacco cessation, (2) long-term c...
Article
This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low-income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects...
Article
Purpose: This study exploits differences in the implementation of welfare reform across states and over time in the United States in the attempt to identify causal effects of welfare reform on youth arrests for drug-related crimes between 1990 and 2005, the period during which welfare reform unfolded. Methodology: Using monthly arrest data from...
Article
Nutrition is a key input in the health production function, and a better understanding of how we eat can aid in guiding effective policy change towards better population health. This study documents prevalence rates, trends in, and potential correlates of nutrient intake for panels of countries, categorized by geographical regions and levels of dev...
Article
This study assesses whether mental health interventions can improve academic outcomes for justice-involved youth. Only a limited number of studies have linked justice policies to outcomes beyond crime, particularly education, which carries large monetary and non-monetary benefits. The current study relies on detailed administrative data and unique...
Chapter
The Oxford Handbook of Economics and Human Biology provides an extensive and insightful overview of how economic conditions affect human well-being and how human health influences economic outcomes. The book addresses both macro and micro factors, as well as their interaction, providing new understanding of complex relationships and developments in...
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Prevailing economic theory suggests an important distinction between nominal and real values. This concept of purchasing power helps explain the motivation behind basic economic decisions such as whether to invest, save, or consume. Consumers and businesses that make decisions without consideration of purchasing power are assumed to exhibit “money...
Article
Although the primary form of tobacco use worldwide is cigarette smoking, the large majority of users in India consume smokeless forms of tobacco. There is little evidence on the role of policy-related factors in shaping the demand for smokeless tobacco (ST) in India. This study evaluates the relationship between two such factors, prices and adverti...
Article
This paper presents a new empirical study of the effects of televised alcohol advertising and alcohol price on alcohol consumption. A novel feature of this study is that the empirical work is guided by insights from behavioral economic theory. Unlike the theory used in most prior studies, this theory predicts that restriction on alcohol advertising...
Article
A substantial body of research has found that expansions in Medicaid eligibility increased enrollment in Medicaid, reduced the rate of uninsured, and reduced the rate of private health insurance coverage (i.e., crowd-out). Notably, no published research has examined the labor supply mechanism by which crowd-out could occur. This study examines the...
Article
Autism is a development disorder that has increased in prevalence from 0.5 to 14.7 per 1,000 children over 1970–2010. Using annual wages and provider counts from the American Community Survey and information from 21 regional development centers in California, we estimate the labor demand for auxiliary health providers. We focus on this subset of pr...
Article
This study documents prevalence rates, trends in, and determinants of body mass index (BMI), outcomes related to obesity, and proximate inputs into obesity such as caloric intake for panels of countries, categorized by geographical regions and levels of development for the time period 1980-2008. Our estimates inform the nature and scope of obesity...
Conference Paper
Spending on prescription drugs (Rx) represents one of the fastest growing components of US healthcare spending and has coincided with an expansion of pharmaceutical promotional spending. Most (83%) of Rx promotion is directed at physicians in the form of visits by pharmaceutical representatives (known as detailing) and drug samples provided to phys...
Article
This article discusses the role of advertising and promotion as determinants of health, while providing a conceptual and empirical framework through which to study the economics of advertising in markets for healthcare inputs. Implications for public health generally depend on whether advertising raises 'selective' or brand-specific demand versus '...
Chapter
This article discusses the role of consumer-directed and physician-directed promotion in the pharmaceutical market, based on the classic conceptual framework of whether such promotion is 'persuasive' and/or 'informative.' Implications for public health and welfare partly depend on whether, and to what extent, advertising: (1) raises 'selective' or...
Article
Full-text available
Spending on prescription drugs (Rx) represents one of the fastest growing components of U.S. healthcare spending, and has coincided with an expansion of pharmaceutical promotional spending. Most (83%) of Rx promotion is directed at physicians in the form of visits by pharmaceutical representatives (known as detailing) and drug samples provided to p...
Article
Shifts in time and income constraints over economic expansions and contractions would be expected to affect individuals' behaviors. We explore the impact of the business cycle on individuals' exercise, time use, and total physical exertion, utilizing information on 112,000 individual records from the 2003-2010 American Time Use Surveys. In doing so...
Article
While the prevalence of smokeless tobacco (ST) is low relative to smoking, the distribution of ST use is highly skewed with consumption concentrated among certain segments of the population (rural residents, males, whites, low-educated individuals). Furthermore, there is suggestive evidence that use has trended upwards recently for groups that have...
Article
We investigate the effects of broad-based work incentives on female crime by exploiting the welfare reform legislation of the 1990s, which dramatically increased employment among women at risk for relying on cash assistance. We find that welfare reform decreased female property crime arrests by 4–5%, but did not affect other types of crimes. The ef...
Article
This review discusses the role of consumer-directed and physician-directed promotion in the pharmaceutical market, based on the classic conceptual framework of whether such promotion is “persuasive” and/or “informative”. Implications for public health and welfare partly depend on whether, and to what extent, advertising: 1) raises “selective” or br...
Article
While the link between physical activity and health has been studied, there are several limitations that persist in this literature relating to external and internal validity of the estimates, potential measurement error in self-reported weight and risk factors, failure to account for physical activity beyond exercise, and failure to separate the e...
Article
Full-text available
Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impairments in social interaction, communication, and restricted or repetitive behaviors. This previously rare condition has dramatically increased in prevalence from 0.5 in 1000 children during the 1970s to 11.3 in 1000 children in 2008. Using data from the California Department of Developmental...

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