Since the seminal paper by Ruhm (2000), a large body of literature agrees on the existence of pro-cyclical fluctuation between economy's performance and mortality, and this evidence has been confirmed also during the Great Recession (GR). In this study we identify a series of important...

A large body of literature, mainly based on hospital costs, shows that time to death (TTD) is by far a better predictor of health spending than age. In this paper, we investigate if this finding holds true also in presence of outpatient costs (drugs, diagnostic tests and specialist visits). Our...

Standard measures of bodyweight (overweight and obese, for example) fail to reflect technological progress over time - and in particular, recent progress disproportionately promoting longevity at higher bodyweights (and differences in access to it). This paper builds on the pioneering work of...

The assessment of cardiovascular risk represents the essential prerequisite to any health policy aimed to the reduction of modifiable risk factors.The CHECK (Cholesterol and Health: Education, Control and Knowledge) Study originated from this context: CHECK is the first randomized Italian...