1,721,021 research outputs found
The impact of health expenditure on the number of chronic diseases
No full textWe investigate the impact of health expenditure on health outcomes on a large sample of Europeans aged above 50 using individual and regional level data. We find a negative and significant effect of lagged health expenditure on subsequent changes in the number of chronic diseases. This effect varies according to age, health behavior, gender, income, and education. Our empirical findings are confirmed also when health expenditure is instrumented with parliament political composition
The relationship between corruption and chronic diseases: evidence from Europeans aged 50 years and older
No full textObjectives: Do people living in more corrupted countries report worse health? We answer this question by investigating the relationship between country-level corruption and the number of chronic diseases for a sample of Europeans aged above 50. Methods: We link a rich panel dataset on individual health and socio-demographic characteristics with two country-level corruption indices, analyse the overall relationship with pooled ordinary least squares and fixed-effect models, explore heterogeneous effects driven by country and individual factors, and disentangle the effect across different public sectors. Results: Individuals living in more corrupted countries suffer from a higher number of chronic diseases. The heterogeneity analysis shows that (1) health outcomes are worsened especially for respondents living in relatively low-income countries; (2) the health of females and people with poor socio-economic status is more affected by corruption; (3) the corruption–health negative link mainly occurs for cardiovascular diseases and ulcers; (4) only corrupted sectors linked with healthcare are associated with poorer health. Conclusions: We inform the policy debate with novel results in establishing a nexus between corruption and morbidity indicators
The vote with the wallet game: Responsible consumerism as a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma
No full textSocially responsible consumers and investors are increasingly using their consumption and saving choices as a 'vote with the wallet' to award companies that are at vanguard in reconciling the creation of economic value with social and environmental sustainability. In our paper, we model the vote with the wallet as a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma, outline equilibria and possible solutions to the related coordination failure problem in evolutionary games, apply our analysis to domains in which the vote with the wallet is empirically more relevant, and provide policy suggestions
A war is forever: The long-run effects of early exposure to World War II on trust
No full textThis paper examines the long-term effect of conflict on trust by using changes in places and timing of combats during World War II. We focus on the pre-school period, an important life stage for the formation of trust and an age where war exposure may persist throughout life. We find robust evidence that individuals exposed to combats in the first six years of life display lower trust and social engagement well into adulthood. In light of the well-known relationship between trust and collective action, our results lend credence to the theory that violent conflict inhibits well-functioning government in long run
Testing for heterogeneity of preferences in randomized experiments: a satisfaction-based approach applied to multiplayer prisoners’ dilemmas
Full text linkWe use experimental data from the ‘vote with the wallet’ multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma to investigate with a finite mixture approach the effect of a responsible purchase on players’ satisfaction. We find clear-cut evidence of heterogeneity of preferences with two groups of players that differ significantly in terms of effects of the responsible choice on satisfactio
Nudging and corporate environmental responsibility: A natural field experiment
Full text linkWe devise a “nudging” natural field experiment to test the impact of a simple form of advertising on environmentally responsible products with/without the increase of the responsible product price. We find that the simple use of a small shelf poster explaining the importance of buying a green product (with/without a concurring price increase) generates significant changes in market shares for some of the product classes for both food and non-food products. Part of the effect is generated by the reduced price elasticity of consumers to the poster-plus-price-increase treatment
What about the others? Conditional cooperation, climate change perception and ecological actions
Full text linkClimate challenge can be modelled as a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma where ecological action - e.g., purchasing an electric car or adopting sustainable life-styles - is costly in terms of economic resources, time, and effort. The prisoner's dilemma structure of the game implies that, even though the social benefit is maximized - and every player would be better off - with everyone taking ecological actions, the strategy profile with no player taking action is a Nash equilibrium, assuming players have purely self-regarding preferences. In this paper we analyse how this ecological dilemma is affected by people's perceptions. Using the European Social Survey, we study how urgent the climate threat is perceived by respondents and their beliefs about other countries' actions. Theoretical predictions suggest that the former increases, while the latter does not affect individual willingness to act ecologically when introducing heterogeneity about the effect of worry on intrinsic motivations. Our empirical findings however show that both factors positively affect willingness to act. We interpret the positive effect by arguing that intrinsic motivations are also affected by other people action and show that the effect is weaker as social capital increases
The new industrial revolution: the optimal choice for flexible work companies
Full text linkThe mandatory shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has made employers and employees increasingly aware of the productivity benefits that may arise from the digital revolution. To explore the characteristics of these gains, we build a model that enables companies to choose from three types of relationship inputs: face-to-face, remote synchronous, and remote asynchronous. Once remote interactions are included, five factors influencing job satisfaction and therefore worker productivity can be identified: (i) reduced mobility, (ii) interaction frequency, (iii) optimal time/place, (iv) work-life balance, and (v) relationship decay effects. We compute the optimal distribution of the three relationship types that maximize corporate profits, conditioning on reasonable parametric assumptions on these five effects. Additionally, we evaluate the potential productivity growth for companies employing only face-to-face interactions when introducing remote interactions. We test our theoretical predictions with a Structural Equation Model, revealing that remote work enhances worker satisfaction and willingness to contribute additional effort at the same wage. Our empirical findings have relevant implications for industrial and environmental policies at both national and supranational levels
Testing for heterogeneity of preferences in randomized experiments: a satisfaction-based approach applied to multiplayer prisoners’ dilemmas
No full textWe use experimental data from the ‘vote with the wallet’ multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma to investigate with a finite mixture approach the effect of a responsible purchase on players’ satisfaction. We find clear-cut evidence of heterogeneity of preferences with two groups of players that differ significantly in terms of effects of the responsible choice on satisfaction
Vaccine uptake and constrained decision making: The case of Covid-19
No full textPolicy makers require support in conceptualizing and assessing the impact that vaccination policies can have on the proportion of the population being vaccinated against COVID-19. To this purpose, we propose a behavioural economics-based framework to model vaccination choices. We calibrate our model using up-to-date surveys on people attitudes toward vaccination as well as estimates of COVID-19 infection and mortality rates and vaccine efficacy for the UK population. Our findings show that vaccine campaigns hardly reach herd immunity if the sceptics have real-time information on the proportion of the population being vaccinated and the negationists do not change their attitudes toward vaccination. Based on our results, we discuss the main implications of the model's application in the context of nudging and voluntariness versus mandatory rule-based policies
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