Descriptive studies on the European Union’s global image reveal generally favourable feelings towards the European Union on the part of citizens outside Europe. However, European Union perceptions vary considerably across countries. This article argues that these patterns can be...

In recent years, governments and other stakeholders have increasingly used administrative data for measuring healthcare outcomes and building rankings of health care providers. However, the accuracy of such data sources has often been questioned. Starting in 2002, the Lombardy (Italy) regional...

The goal of this paper was to investigate whether or not the factors beyond individual characteristics were associated with maternal smoking during pregnancy. Social capital has been found to have both negative and positive implications for health behaviors, and this study attempted to...

In empirical regional economics, returns to scale are typically estimated at the regional level in search for evidence on alternative theories of growth and agglomeration. However, returns to scale may also have a firm-level dimension. In this paper, we exploit micro level data and estimate the...

Improving the health and wellbeing of citizens ranks highly on the agenda of most governments. Policy action to enhance health and wellbeing can be targeted at a range of geographical levels and in England the focus has tended to shift away from the national level to smaller areas, such as...