Why do people demand health?

This paper proposes several ways to extend the standard model for health and health services. Psychological aspects such as status seeking, identity seeking and health adaptation are modelled within the framework of the Grossman model. While the two first aspects may be important psychological mechanisms, the adaptation process seems to be the most relevant process to model within a theoretical dynamic framework. As far as we know, there are no formal analyses of this process in the economic literature.Grossman; health adaption; health services

Absenteeism, Health Insurance, and Business Cycles

We use a dependent competing risks hazard rate model to investigate individual sickness absence behaviour in Norway, on the basis of register data covering more than 2 million absence spells. Our findings are: i) that business cycle improvements yield lower work-resumption rates for persons who are absent, and higher relapse rates for persons who have already resumed work; ii) that absence sometimes represents a health investment, in the sense that longer absence ‘now’ reduces the subsequent relapse propensity; and iii) that the work-resumption rate increases when sickness benefits are exhausted, but that work-resumptions at this point tend to be short-lived.Absenteeism; Dependent risks

Moral concerns on tradable pollution permits in international environmental agreements

We investigate how moral concerns about permit trading affect an endogenous pollution permit trading equilibrium, where governments choose non-cooperatively the amount of permits they allocate to domestic industries. Politicians may feel reluctant to allow permit trading and/or may prefer that abatement is undertaken domestically due to moral concerns. This will have an effect on the initial permit allocations, and, therefore, on global emissions. The impact on global emissions depends on the precise formulation of the moral concerns, but under reasonable assumptions, we show that global emissions may increase. Thus, doing what is perceived as good does not always yield the desired outcome. However, this can be offset by restrictions on permit trading when governments have moral concerns about this trade.Tradable emission permits, international environmental agreements, non-cooperative game theory, moral motivation, identity.

Equity and Justice in Global Warming Policy

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions.Economics of Climate Change, Intragenerational Equity, Distributive Justice

Equity and justice in global warming policy

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e.., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions.Economics of climate change, intragenerational equity, distributive justice

Sammenhengen mellom inntekt, inntektsulikhet og helse

Denne artikkelen gir en oversikt over sammenhengene mellom inntekt og helse på den ene siden og inntektsulikheter og helseulikheter på den andre siden. I hovedsak refereres det til teoretisk og empirisk forskning innen økonomi, men også annen forskning blir omtalt. Jeg ser først på sammenhengene mellom absolutt inntekt og helse og skiller mellom de kausale sammenhengene som går fra inntekt til helse, helse til inntekt samt at det er andre faktorer som påvirker inntekt og helse i samme retning. Deretter ser jeg på sammenhengene mellom relativ inntekt, inntektsulikhet og helse før jeg avslutter med en gjennomgang av noen arbeider om helse og økonomisk utvikling.helse og inntekt; inntektsulikhet; helse og økonomisk utvikling

Health inequality in Nordic welfare states - more inequality or the wrong measures?

Several empirical papers have indicated that the health inequalities in the Nordic welfare states seem to be at least as high as health inequalities in other European countries even if the Nordic states have a more egalitarian income structure. This is in contrast to standard economic theory that predicts that income equality should lead to health equality everything else equal. We argue that there may be a straightforward explanation why Nordic countries appear to have a steeper health gradient than other countries. Health and income are related, and the correlation between income and health will be weaker the more noise there is in terms of other determinants of income. If the Nordic countries have succeeded in reducing the impacts of other determinants of income, like social class, then the correlation between income and health will be stronger in the Nordic countries. This story also holds for other measures of health inequality. However, if the causality is running from income to health, there may be a reason why health inequality is higher in more egalitarian states based on cognitive stress theory. We argue however, that even in this case the difference between Nordic states and the rest of Europe may be a result of poor measures.Health inequality; socio-economic status; Nordic welfare states; egalitarian countries

The Effects of Transport Regulation on the Oil Market: Does Market Power Matter?

Popular instruments to regulate consumption of oil in the transport sector include fuel taxes, biofuel requirements, and fuel efficiency. Their impacts on oil consumption and price vary. One important factor is the market setting. We show that if market power is present in the oil market, the directions of change in consumption and price may contrast those in a competitive market. As a result, the market setting impacts not only the effectiveness of the policy instruments to reduce oil consumption, but also terms of trade and carbon leakage. In particular, we show that under monopoly, reduced oil consumption due to increased fuel efficiency will unambiguously increase the price of oil.transport regulations, oil market, monopoly, terms-of-trade effects, carbon leakage

A model for supply of informal care to elderly parents

This paper presents a model of informal care to parents. We assume that the child participates in the labour market and gains in utility from consumption and leisure. In addition it has altruistic motivation to give informal care to its elderly parent. We show how the labour income, labour supply and informal caregiving are affected by exogenous factors such as the education level, wage rate, other supply of care, travel distance and inheritance.informal care for elderly; labour market; elderly parent

Informal Care and Labor Supply

Based on Norwegian register data we show that having a lone parent in the terminal phase of life significantly affects the offspring's labor market activity. The employment propensity declines by around 1 percentage point among sons and 2 percentage points among daughters during the years just prior to the parent's death, ceteris paribus. Long-term sickness absence increases sharply. The probability of being a long-term social security claimant (defined as being a claimant for at least three months during a year) rises with as much as 4 percentage points for sons and 2 percentage points for daughters. After the parent's demise, earnings tend to rise for those still in employment while the employment propensity continues to decline. The higher rate of social security dependency persists for several years.elderly care, labor supply, ageing, inheritance