"Earlier briefs in this series make the case that there is added value for the agricultural and health sectors in working more closely together to address problems of human well-being that fall at the intersection of the two sectors. Yet the divisions between the two sectors are wide and...

We built a unique dataset of 300,000 famous people born between Hammurabi's epoch and 1879, Einstein's birth year. It includes, among other variables, the vital dates, occupations, and locations of celebrities from the Index Bio-bibliographicus Notorum Hominum (IBN), a very comprehensive...

We propose a new theory of the demographic transition based on the evidence that body development during childhood is an important predictor of adult life expectancy. Fertility, childhood development, longevity, education and income growth all result from individual decisions. Parents face a...

We propose four arguments favoring the idea that medical effectiveness, adult longevity and height started to increase in Europe before the industrial revolution. This may have prompted households to increase their investment in human skills as a response to longer lives and initiated the...

We study a model in which heterogenous agents first form a trading network where link formation is costless. Then, a seller and a buyer are randomly selected among the agents to bargain through a chain of intermediaries. We determine both the trading path and the allocation of the surplus among...

Extrinsic uncertainty is effective at a competitive equilibrium. This is generic if spot markets are inoperative: the only objects of exchange are assets for the contingent delivery of commodities; and the asset market is incomplete. The structure of payoffs of assets may allow for non-trivial...

At a Nash-Walras equilibrium, individuals exchange commodities competitively, and, simultaneously, they interact strategically. Under standard assumptions, Nash-Walras equilibria exist, equilibrium profiles of actions are, typically, determinate byt Pareto suboptimal, though not constrained...

Behavioral economics has shaken the view that individuals have well-defined, consistent and stable preferences. This raises a challenge for welfare economics, which takes as a key postulate that individual preferences should be respected. We agree with Bernheim (2009) and Bernheim and Rangel...

In this paper we examine whether, and how, welfare economics should incorporate the insights from happiness and satisfaction studies. Our main point is that measuring well-being by reported satisfaction levels can come in conáict with individuals judgments about their own lives and that these...

A social state is irreducible if, and only if for any non-trivial partition of individuals with two groups, there exists another feasible social state at which every individual in the first group is equally well-off and someone strictly better-off. Competitive equilibria decentralize irreducible...