A common question always had been of interest to understand as to how people make decisions. It is well known that decisions are not made in isolation but they are the products of influence and confluence of social correlates. Studies of some Sociologists report that often decisions are made in...

Examination of changes in availability and reliability of Soviet and post-Soviet state statistics related to population money income, consumption, health, and welfare of the last ten years. It is noted that gaps, ambiguities, and archaic collection methods still plague the statistical data.

This paper reviews the extent to which policy interventions can affect risky behaviours such as smoking, drinking and diet. The justification for such intervention is typically a market failure, broadly defined. The types of market failure typically encountered are discussed. First and second...

Small firms that offer health insurance to their employees may face variable premiums if the firm hires an employee with high-expected health costs. To avoid expensive premium variability, a small firm may attempt to maintain a workforce with low-expected health costs. In addition, workers with...

This paper aims to provide an overview of issues associated with the economics of food safety in developing countries. It is intended to highlight the major questions and concerns associated with an economic analysis of food safety issues, both generally and specifically in a developing country...

This paper draws upon development economics theory, demographic projections, and empirical evidence to consider the likely consequences of the HIV/AIDS pandemic for the agricultural sector of the hardest-hit countries of Eastern and Southern Africa. We identify four processes that have been...

Based on the aggregation of individual willingness-to-pay for a statistical life, we calibrate an intertemporal optimization model to determine the aggregate welfare losses from HIV/AIDS in 25 Eastern European countries. Assuming a discount rate of three percent, we find a total welfare loss for...

This paper develops a simple analytical framework in which optimal health and retirement policies amid population aging can be discussed. To be efficient, these policies must recognize and exploit the dynamic complementarities between the timing of retirement, the size of lifecycle labour income...

This paper studies the evolution of early retirement due to disease and injury in the German labor force between 1988 and 2004. Using data from the German Federation of Public Pension Providers, the IMS Health Drug Launches database and the WHO Mortality Database, we show that new drug launches...

La teoria della finanza pubblica generalmente adduce a motivi dell’intervento pubblico nella sanità da un lato i “fallimenti del mercato”, in particolare di quello assicurativo, dall’altro i principi dell’“equità” distributiva. La separazione tra obiettivi di “efficienza” e...