A key question underpinning health production, and one that remains relatively unexplored, is the influence of socio-economic and environmental factors on weight gain and obesity. Such issues acquire particular relevance when data from two Mediterranean countries (Italy and Spain) are compared....

Western societies can reduce avoidable mortality and morbidity by better understanding the relationship between obesity and chronic disease. This paper examines the joint determinants of obesity and of heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and elevated cholesterol. It analyzes a broadly...

This paper provides an analysis on whether 15D and EQ-5D can be used interchangeably as health outcome measures in cost-effectiveness studies. The empirical performance of the two multi attribute utility instruments is tested in terms of feasibility, utility score, linear relationship and...

We develop and explore an economic model in which cigarette consumption enhances utility but reduces the probability of survival through the period. Social capital is produced by time spent developing and maintaining social relationships. By requiring time inputs, social capital has an...

This paper examines whether sickness history affects annual earnings and/or hourly wages in Sweden, using a unique longitudinal database. If poor health makes people less productive, previous sickness is expected to have a negative effect on hourly wages. If poor health reduces people’s...

The question addressed in this paper is whether sickness history affects annual earnings and hourly wages in Sweden. If poor health makes people less productive, we expect to find a negative effect of previous health history on hourly wages. If, instead, poor health reduces people´s working...

In this paper we investigate reporting heterogeneity in the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) when it is used to measure current health status in cardiovascular patients. We provide a new framework to identify reporting heterogeneity using quantile regressions. EQ-5D responses are used as a proxy to...

This paper examines the determinants of very low birth weight infant (or neonatal) mortality using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research database from 1997 to 2009. After infants are discharged from hospital, it is not possible to track their mortality, so the Cox proportional hazard...

While a growing literature examining the relationship between income and health expenditures suggests that health care is a luxury good, this conclusion is contentiously debated due to heterogeneity of the existing results. This paper tests the luxury good hypothesis using meta-regression...

We compare the distributional consequences of two different waiting times initiatives. The primary focus of Scotland’s recent waiting time reforms has been on reducing maximum waiting times through the imposition of high profile national targets. In Norway, the focus has been on appropriate...