We study the health effects of the spread of democratic institutions and the extension of voting rights in 15 European countries since the middle of the nineteenth century. We employ both cross country and cohort variation in heights and employ a new instrument for democracy and the extension of...

We study whether a democracy improves a measure of individual wellbeing; human heights. Drawing on individual-level datasets, we test the hypothesis using a battery of eight different measures of democracy and derived averages, and include models accounting for several confounders, regional and...

Economic downturns give rise to unexpected employment shocks that can reshape the distribution of population income, and hence produce a "middle-class squeeze". However, there is limited empirical evidence testing the latter. This paper aims at testing the "middle-class squeeze" hypothesis...

In the European Union, medicines are regulated products subject to both single market (e.g., regional exhaustion of property rights) and country specific health care regulations (e.g., medicines pricing). This gives rise to parallel trade (PT), a phenomenon that takes place when a patented...

The measurement of health inequalities usually involves either estimating the concentration of health outcomes using an income-based measure of status or applying conventional inequalitymeasurement tools to a health variable that is non-continuous or, in many cases, categorical. However, these...

We still know little about what motivates the informal care arrangements provided in old age. The introduction of demand-side subsidies such as unconditional caregiving allowances (cash benefits designed either to incentivize the provision of informal care, or compensate for the loss of...

One of the most common reasons for people to save is in order to pay for their care in later life. However, the effect of long-term care subsidies on savings is far from clear. In this paper we take advantage of a policy intervention to study the effect on savings and savings behaviour of the...

Culture is an under-studied determinant of health production and seldom measured. This paper empirically examines the persistence and association of health capital assessments of first and second-generation migrants with that of their ancestral countries. We draw on European data from 30...

Does regional decentralization threaten the commitment to regional equality in government outcomes? We attempt to shed light on this question by drawing on unique evidence from the largest European unitary states to have engaged in countrywide health system decentralization: Italy and Spain. We...

Parental influences on children health related behaviours are argued to be gender assortative (e.g., that maternal behaviour is more important for daughters), but research devoted to disentangling such effects is still at its infancy. We take advantage of a unique dataset (Health Survey for...