I discuss the measurement of world poverty and inequality, with particular attention to the role of purchasing power parity (PPP) price indexes from the International Comparison Project. Global inequality increased with the latest revision of the ICP, and this reduced the global poverty line...

This paper provides evidence on ex-ante moral hazard in Portugal. The issue is addressed in a setting where people buy voluntary private health insurance, on top of existing Government coverage. We identify the main factors that lead people to adopt healthy lifestyles, such as taking up sports...

Subjective probabilities are now collected on a number of large household surveys with the objective of providing data to better understand intertemporal decision making. Comparison of subjective probabilities with actual outcomes shows that the probabilities have considerable predictive power...

We analyze optimal contracts and optimal matching patterns in a simple model of partnership where there is a double-sided moral hazard problem and potential partners differ in their productivity in two tasks. It is possible for one individual to accomplish both tasks (sole production) and there...

In this paper we explore the possibility that individuals may select insurance coverage in part based on their anticipated behavioral response to the insurance contract. Such "selection on moral hazard" can have important implications for attempts to combat either selection or moral hazard. We...

Both under- and over-treatment of communicable diseases are public bads. But efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other. Using rich experimental data on household treatment- seeking behavior in Kenya, we study the implications of this trade-off for subsidizing life-saving...

Food labelling has become a major element of food policy. The growing importance of the topic is associated with a large variety of labels which refer to very different characteristics of foods and are linked to a growing number of quality assurance schemes. The economics of labelling is still...

Many people do not purchase products that would appear to benefit them. For example, the price of an efficient cookstove can be less than a few months’ savings on fuel. If liquidity constraints, present bias, and poor information on fuel savings and stove durability are barriers, then...

The benefits of separating drug prescribing and dispensing are still unclear, in particular when drug consumption is characterized by important spillovers. We investigate the role of dispensing physicians in the consumption of antibiotics characterized by two opposite external effects: infection...

Default rates on instalment loans vary with type of the good purchased. Using an Italian dataset of instalment loans between 1995-1999, we first show that the variation persists even after controlling for contract and individual-specific characteristics, and for the potential selection bias due...