Labor and Public Studies

Abstract

The first chapter studies how firms set contributions to employer-provided 401(k)-type pension plans. Using a reform that decreased the subsidy for contributions to capital pension accounts for Danish workers in the top income tax bracket, we provide strong evidence that employers' contributions are based on their employees' savings preferences. We find an immediate decrease in employer contributions to capital accounts, whose magnitude increased in the share of employees directly affected by the reform. The second chapter studies the impacts of physicians with differential prescribing behaviors on patient prescription drug use and labor market outcomes for the four classes of prescription drugs used most frequently to treat musculoskeletal and mental health disorders: opioids, anti-inflammatories, anti-anxiety drugs, and anti-depressants. I use Danish administrative data and exploit quasi-random separations of individuals from their physicians associated with geographic moves across municipalities to estimate the causal impact of physician prescribing rates on individual prescription drug use and labor market outcomes. I find that having a general practitioner who has a 10 percentage point higher opioid prescription rate leads to a 4.5 percentage point increase in the probability an individual uses prescribed opioids, as well as a 1.5 percentage point decrease in their labor force participation. Changes in physician prescribing rates lead to similar changes in prescription drug use for the other classes of prescription drugs, but they are not associated with any discernible effect on labor market outcomes. In the third chapter, I use Denmark Administrative population data to identify exposure effects of municipalities on mortality. Using variation from individuals who move between 1984-2004, we find that each additional year an individual lives in a municipality in 1984-2004 increases the association between their probability of death from 2005-2015 and the municipality's 10 year mortality rate by 3 percentage points. When we specifically estimate exposure effects, we find that living in a municipality with a 1 SD higher exposure mortality effect for 60 years increases an individual's 10 year mortality rate by 3.4 percentage points. This effect attenuates by approximately 10% when we include controls, but still remains large and significant.