Perikles is usually seen as a great statesman and clever leader of the Athenians. In the mid fifth century BC, he seems however to have been in serious political trouble and may well have been in danger of losing the struggle for power and of being ostracised. The fact that his incentives...

The TECH research network collected patient-level data on three procedures for treatment of heart attack patients, (catheterization, coronary artery by-pass grafts and percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty), for seventeen countries over an eighteen year period to examine the impact of...

From a beginning of small isolated settlements, the city-state (polis) emerged in Greece in the course of four centuries as a political, geographical and judicial unit, with an assembly, council, magistrates and written laws. Using a rational-actor perspective, it is shown how this process was...

In view of the rising proportion of elderly in the population, diffusion of medical technologies to the elderly is a particularly interesting phenomenon, with respect to both quality of life and health care costs. Using data on all carotid endarterectomies (CEAs) performed in Sweden, we explore...

Vita brevis, ars longa (or: life is too short for abstracts)

Around 600 B.C., Athens was ruled by a birth aristocracy. Some 150 years later, the city-state was a “democracy”. A rational-actor perspective, as perceived in the new institutional economics, sheds additional light on this intriguing transformation by focussing our attention on the...

This paper explores the mutual influence between the institutional development in Athens in the archaic and classical periods and the contemporary changes in economic life. This enhances our understanding of the causes and consequences of institutional change. It is also worth exploring in view...

We use the Economic Freedom Index (Gwartney, Lawson and Norton 2008) to characterise the institutions of ancient Athens in the fourth century BCE. It has been shown that ancient Greece witness improved living conditions for an extended period of time. Athens in the classical period appears to...

A period of two and a half millennia separates us from the Classical period of ancient Greece. Nevertheless, looking at ancient Greek medicine from the perspective of modern health economics is an interesting endeavour in that it increases our understanding of the ancient world and provides...

Disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) is a concept which has rapidly gained in popularity in health policy and considerable research resources are being allocated to the area. Proponents of DALYs suggest that the measure can be used both as a “GDP of health” and to help in setting...