Researchers have suggested that the relationship between the emission of carbon dioxide per capita and the real gross domestic product per capita follows an inverted-U-shaped (so-called environmental Kuznets) curve. Studies have generally used polynomial regression (quadratic or cubic form) to...

Many European countries have recently experienced a substantial increase in the proportion of immigrants in their populations. The incidence of resident foreigners calculated at a national level does not provide information on the local spatial and temporal distribution of the phenomenon. This...

In this paper, we investigate the impact that spatial and micro-economic variables have on the probability that a household goes on holiday. In doing so, we propose two alternative modelling specifications: a classic discrete choice model and a semiparametric logistic model. The semiparametric...

The aim of this paper was to estimate the effect of obesity on the employment probability for Italian men and women accounting for both observed and unobserved confounding. We use microdata collected by the Italian National Statistical Office for the year 2009 during a multi-scope survey of...

Previous evidence shows that better insurance coverage increases medical expenditure. However, formal studies on the effect of spending on health outcomes, and especially mental health, are lacking. To fill this gap, we reanalyze data from the Rand Health Insurance Experiment and estimate a...

Regression models describingthe dependence between a univariate response and a set of covariates play a fundamental role in statistics. In the last two decades, a tremendous effort has been made in developing flexible regression techniques such as generalized additive models(GAMs) with the aim...

Previous evidence shows that better insurance coverage increases medical expenditure. However, formal studies on the effect of spending on health outcomes, and especially mental health, are lacking. To fill this gap, we reanalyze data from the Rand Health Insurance Experiment and estimate a...

Estimates of HIV prevalence are important for policy in order to establish the health status of a country's population, to evaluate the effectiveness of population-based interventions and campaigns, to identify the most at risk members of the population, and to target those most in need of...

Empirical research on poverty today often goes beyond a focus on income to consider other dimensions of well-being. However, relatively few multidimensional poverty measures explicitly consider time, despite its particular relevance to women's double burden of paid and unpaid work. We construct...