Inequality and crisis: conspicuous consumption as the missing link in the portuguese case

Portuguese household debt increased above GDP between 2000 and 2007. This article uses conspicuous consumption to explain credit demand dynamics. The author develops an institutionalist framework and consider how rapid high inequalities and increasing top income share favored conspicuous consumption and climbing household debt.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Latent class models for utilisation of health care

This paper explores different approaches to econometric modelling of count measures of health care utilisation, with an emphasis on latent class models. A new model is proposed that combines the features of the two most common approaches- the hurdle model and the finite mixture Negative Binomial. Additionally, the panel structure of the data is taken into account. The proposed model is shown to perform better than the existing models for a particular application with data from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment.

Explaining Probability Judgment Inaccuracy: A Lens Model Extended Decomposition of the Brier Score

Identifying sources of inaccuracy in probability judgments can help correct decision errors. We combine the lens model with the Brier Score to decompose this measure of inaccuracy into (a) difficulty of judgment task, (b) outcome predictability, (c) bias, (d) inappropriate weighting of cues, (e) private information, and (f) noise. Private information refers to discriminatory power of judgments uncorrelated with observable, modeled cues. Its identification can be particularly valuable to explain inaccuracy of laypersons’ judgments about personal events, and to gauge the knowledge of experts predicting impersonal events. We illustrate this new decomposition by using it to explain the accuracy of professional forecasters in predicting economic recession and the grossly inaccurate judgments of older Americans about their longevity. In both applications, judgment difficulty makes the largest contributions to inaccuracy and its variation, although this is partially offset by outcome predictability. Inappropri-ate weighting of cues is substantial and helps explain heterogeneity in inaccuracy. In the longevity application, low discriminatory power of the judgments is partly due to insufficient responsiveness to mortality risk factors, particularly among the least educated. In both applications, noise in judgment residuals (net of predictions from cues) is an important source of inaccuracy and its variation. This noise is partially offset by nonnegligible (private) information these residuals contain on the outcom

Health care utilisation in Europe: new evidence from the ECHP

The ECHP is used to analyse the utilisation of health care in Europe. We estimate a new latent class hurdle model for panel data and compare it with the latent class NegBin model and the standard hurdle model. Latent class specifications outperform the standard hurdle model but the latent class hurdle model reveals income e¤ects on the probability of visiting a doctor that are masked in the NegBin model. For visits to specialist, low users are more income elastic than high users and the probability of using health care is more income elastic than the conditional number of visits.Inequality, inequity, health care utilisation, mixture models, latent class models, hurdle models, panel data, ECHP

Travail, inégalité et autoconsommation au Portugal

Branco Cerdeira Manuel Rui, Soares Regina, Bago d’Uva Teresa. Travail, inégalité et autoconsommation au Portugal. In: Economie et statistique, n°383-385, 2005. Les approches de la pauvreté à l'épreuve des comparaisons internationales. pp. 179-192

Measurement of horizontal inequity in health care utilisation using European Panel data

This paper analyzes the effect of dental insurance on utilization of general dentist services by adult US population aged from 25 to 64 years. Our econometric framework accommdates endogeneity of insurance and the ordered nature of the measure of dental utilization. The study finds strong evidence of endogeneity of dental insurance to utilization and identifies interesting patterns of nonlinear dependencies between the dental insurance status and individual’s age and income. The calculated average treatment effect supports the claim of adverse selection into the treated (insured) state and indicates a strong positive incentives effect of dental insurance.Inequality, inequity, health care utilisation, panel data, ECHP

Does reporting heterogeneity bias the measurement of health disparities?

Heterogeneity in reporting of health by socio-economic and demographic characteristics potentially biases the measurement of health disparities. Responses to anchoring vignettes have been proposed as a means of identifying reporting heterogeneity. We apply the vignette methodology to data from Indonesia, India and China in order to test for systematic differences in reporting of health by sex, age, urban/rural location, education and income and to establish the sensitivity of estimated disparities in health to the purging of reporting differences. The hypothesis of homogeneous reporting across all socio-demographics is rejected. Homogeneity tends to be most consistently and decisively rejected across urban/rural, income and age differences and less consistently across sex and education groups. In general, younger, male (not Indonesia), better educated (not China) low income and urban respondents display lower health expectations. Correcting for reporting heterogeneity tends to reduce disparities in health by age, sex (not Indonesia), urban/rural and education (not China) and to increase income disparities in health. Overall, while homogeneous reporting is significantly rejected, the results suggest that the size of the reporting bias in measures of health disparities is not large.health measurement, vignettes, self-reported health, reporting heterogeneity

Can Reporting Heterogeneity Explain Differences in Depressive Symptoms Across Europe?

Socioeconomic, Depression, Reporting style, International, Vignettes,

Differential health reporting by education level and its impact on the measurement of health inequalities among older Europeans

Background: This study aims to establish whether health reporting differs by education level and, if so, to determine the extent to which this biases the measurement of health inequalities among older Europeans. Methods: Data are from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) covering eight countries. Differential reporting of health by education is identified from ratings of anchoring vignettes that describe fixed health states. Ratings of own health in six domains (mobility, pain, sleep, breathing, emotional health and cognition) are corrected for differences in reporting using an extended ordered probit model. For each country and health domain, we compare the corrected with the uncorrected age - sex standardized high-to-low education rate ratio for the absence of a health problem. Results: Before correction for reporting differences across the 48 combinations of country by health domain, there was no inequality in health by education (P = 0.05) in 32 of 48 cases. However, there were reporting differences by education (P 0.05), which may be considered 'statistically significant'. The greatest impact is in Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands, where inequalities (P > 0.05) appear only after adjustment in four of the six health domains. Conclusions: These results emphasize the need to account for differences in the reporting of health. Measured health inequalities by education are often underestimated, and even go undetected, if no account is taken of these reporting differences