1,721,073 research outputs found
Behavioural economics and policy for pandemics: pandemics as tipping points
No full textThis book is the product of recent insights and contributions at the time of the global COVID-19 pandemic by several scholars in behavioural economics and health policy that are, in one way or another associated in some way with the London School of Economics (LSE). The book also benefits from many years of working together with a variety of collaborators in leading academic universities, policy-making bodies, public health authorities, and international institutions. The aim of this book is to bring closer together the perspectives and contributions of behavioural economics specialising in health, and health economists focused on behaviour, as well as health and behavioural public policy pieces providing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic and in understanding the preparedness and response to future pandemic
Looking ahead: Subjective time perception and individual discounting
Full text linkWe disentangle hyperbolic discounting from subjective time perception using experimental data from incentive-compatible tests to measure time preferences, and a set of experimental tasks to measure time perception. Two behavioral parameters are related to two factors affecting how we look ahead to future events. The first is some component of time preferences reflecting hyperbolic discounting. The second factor is that non-constant discounting may also be a reflection of subjective time perception: if people’s perception of time follows a near logarithmic process (as heat, sound, and light do) then estimates of individual discounting will be mis-measured and incorrectly suggest hyperbolic discounting even if discounting over subjective time is constant. We empirically estimate the two distinct behavioral parameters using data collected from 178 participants in a lab experiment. The results support the hypothesis that apparent non-constant discounting is largely a reflection of non-linear subjective time perception
Physician altruism and moral hazard: (no) evidence from Finnish national prescriptions data
Full text linkWe test the physicians’ altruism and moral hazard hypotheses using a national panel register containing all 2003–2010 statins prescriptions in Finland. We estimate the likelihood that physicians prescribe generic versus branded versions of statins as a function of the shares of the difference between what patients have to pay out of their pocket and what is covered by the insurance, controlling for patient, physician, and drug characteristics. We find that the estimated coefficients and the average marginal effects associated with moral hazard and altruism are nearly zero, and are orders of magnitude smaller than the ones associated with other explanatory factors such as the prescriptions’ year and the physician specialization. When the analysis distinctly accounts for both the patient and the insurer shares of expenditure, the estimated coefficients directly reject the altruism and moral hazard hypotheses. Instead, we find strong and robust evidence of habits persistence in prescribing branded drugs
Psychological and behavioural aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic: systematic evidence and takeaways
No full textOn the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study
Full text link We present a lab-field experiment designed to systematically assess the external validity of social preferences elicited in a variety of experimental games. We do this by comparing behavior in the different games with several behaviors elicited in the field and with self-reported behaviors exhibited in the past, using the same sample of participants. Our results show that the experimental social preference games do a poor job explaining both social behaviors in the field and social behaviors from the past. We also include a systematic review and meta-analysis of previous literature on the external validity of social preference games. Data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2908 . This paper was accepted by John List, behavioral economics. </jats:p
Response to COVID-19:Was Italy (un)prepared?
Full text linkOn 31st January 2020, the Italian cabinet declared a 6-month national emergency after the detection of the first two COVID-19 positive cases in Rome, two Chinese tourists travelling from Wuhan. Between then and the total lockdown introduced on 22nd March 2020 Italy was hit by an unprecedented crisis. In addition to being the first European country to be heavily swept by the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy was the first to introduce stringent lockdown measures. The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and related COVID-19 pandemic have been the worst public health challenge endured in recent history by Italy. Two months since the beginning of the first wave, the estimated excess deaths in Lombardy, the hardest hit region in the country, reached a peak of more than 23,000 deaths. The extraordinary pressures exerted on the Italian Servizio Sanitario Nazionale (SSN) inevitably leads to questions about its preparedness and the appropriateness and effectiveness of responses implemented at both national and regional levels. The aim of the paper is to critically review the Italian response to the COVID-19 crisis spanning from the first early acute phases of the emergency (March–May 2020) to the relative stability of the epidemiological situation just before the second outbreak in October 2020
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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