George Orwell's famous fictions, Animal Farm and Nineteen-Eighty Four were intended to advocate democratic socialism by portraying undemocratic forms of socialism as totalitarian. For Orwell, democracy was a political institution which would limit the abuse of power. But there are several...

I use new administrative data on mass layoffs and plant closings to study the effects of distressing economic news. Exposure to stressful events during pregnancy can impair fetal development. I find that announcement of impending job losses leads to a transient decrease in the mean birth weight...

The circular interplay between demography-employment-productivity-PayGo is investigated for Europe and Us. Looking forward to the mid-long run, the paper offers simulations of the burden each effective worker and each active citizen will have to bear to finance via pay-as-you-go public health...

This paper discusses the development of public expenditure in the Netherlands since 1850. Why did public expenditure increase from 14% GDP in 1850, nearly 20% in 1921, 30% GDP in 1950 and over 60% GDP in 1983? Dutch public expenditure has fallen to less than 50% GDP in 2003. Why did this...

Economic growth does not necessarily ensure environmental sustainability for a country. The relationship between the two is far more complicated for developing countries like India, given the dependence of a large section of the population on natural resources. Under this backdrop, the current...

This study focuses on the relationships among mortality rates, income and educational inequality in terms of economic growth to investigate similarities and differences between the Euro Area and Turkey. For this purpose, income gini as an indicator of income inequality and education gini as an...

In a recent research paper, health economists David Cutler and Adriana Lleras-Muney analyze data primarily from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), an annual cross-sectional household survey administered by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease...

Social sector with the objective to satisfy the welfare needs of the people and to correct the imbalances in the economy claims a sizeable proportion of the public expenditure and has emerged as a significant sector. This paper in this regard is a state level analysis on the growth of public...

This is the first study which provides empirical analysis of the variation in health behaviors for adult men and women in Turkey which is a developing country. The health behaviors considered are smoking, drinking, fruit and vegetable consumption, exercise and body mass index (BMI). We find that...

Unlike Mexico as a whole, the south (that is, the states of Chiapas, Guerrero, and Oaxaca) may well not reach many of the MDGs. The objective of this paper is to document this assertion and discuss some of the constraints toward reaching the MDGs, as well as some initiatives recently taken to...