In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means ofdirect coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices suchas contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In alocal interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with sufficient...

Little is known about what the economic crisis has done to health disparities by income. We apply a decomposition method to unravel the contributions of income growth, income inequality and differential income mobility across socio-demographic groups to changes in health disparities by income in...

Measurement of inequity in health care delivery has focused on the extent to which health care utilisation is or is not distributed according to need, irrespective of income. Studies using cross-sectional data have proposed various ways of measuring and standardizing for need, but inevitably...

An age-cohort decomposition applied to panel data identifies how the mean, overall inequality and income-related inequality of self-assessed health evolve over the life cycle and differ across generations in 11 EU countries. There is a moderate and steady decline in mean health until the age of...

A strong relationship between health and socioeconomic status is firmly established. Yet, partly due to the multidimensional and dynamic nature of the variables, the causal mechanisms connecting them are poorly understood. This paper argues that adoption of a life-cycle perspective is essential...

While there is no doubt that health is strongly correlated with education, whether schooling exerts a causal impact on health is not yet firmly established. We exploit Dutch compulsory schooling laws in a Regression Discontinuity Design applied to linked data from health surveys, tax files and...

There is a concern that ordered responses on health questions may differ acrosspopulations or even across subgroups of a population. This reporting heterogeneity mayinvalidate group comparisons and measures of health inequality. This paper proposes a test fordifferential reporting in ordered...