Reflections on the Origins of the Polis: An Economic Perspective on Institutional Change in Ancient Greece

From a beginning of small isolated settlements around 1000 B.C., the city-state (polis) emerged in Greece in the course of four centuries as a political, geographical and judicial unit, with an assembly, council, magistrates and written laws. Using a rational-actor perspective, it is shown how this process was driven by competition among the members of the elite. A crucial ingredient was the gradual consolidation of boundaries, which contributed to population growth, inter-state conflicts, colonisation and competition for power. Variations over time in the conditions for competition explain both the introduction of formal political institutions and their overthrow by tyrants

A reflection on Richard B. Saltman 'Structural patterns in Swedish health policy

Looking back over 30 years of Swedish health care, professor Saltman examines structural changes in the Swedish health care sector. This is a very welcome contribution to the literature, and it makes good sense – institutional change is often a slow process, and it may take considerable time before the effects can be fully appreciated. Saltman’s paper provides a useful analytical overview of three decades of Swedish health care. He identifies several noteworthy structural patterns: the resilience of the county councils, the slow growth of diversity among service providers and the slow strengthening of patients’ choice. It is interesting to consider this health-sector development in a broader perspective. Both diversity of providers and free choice for patients can be seen as deregulations of the Swedish market. The period from the early 1980s till today is in fact characterized by a deep-going trend of deregulation in Sweden. At the macro level, this is captured by the Economic Freedom Index (Gwartney et al., 2013). This index measures economic freedom in five dimensions and the overall score lies between 0 and 10. For example, second-placed Singapore has an overall index score of 8.60. Back in 1980, Sweden was “a highly regulated economy with several state monopolies and low levels of economic freedom. Less than 20 years later, liberal reforms turned Sweden into one of the world’s most open economies with a remarkable increase in economic freedom” (Bergh and Erlingsson, 2008). The Swedish score increased from 5.68 in 1980 to 7.73 in 2010 (Table 1). This moved Sweden up from 37th to 18th place worldwide (the average score for the 101 countries for which there is data back to 1980 increased by 1.52). Economic freedom increased also in Denmark, Finland and Norway (Norway peaked in 2005–2007), but Sweden increased the most

Societal costs of air pollution-related health hazards: A review of methods and results

This paper aims to provide a critical and systematic review of the societal costs of air pollution-related ill health (CAP), to explore methodological issues that may be important when assessing or comparing CAP across countries and to suggest ways in which future CAP studies can be made more useful for policy analysis. The methodology includes a systematic search based on the major electronic databases and the websites of a number of major international organizations. Studies are categorized by origin – OECD countries or non-OECD countries – and by publication status. Seventeen studies are included, eight from OECD countries and nine from non-OECD countries. A number of studies based on the ExternE methodology and the USA studies conducted by the Institute of Transportation are also summarized and discussed separately. The present review shows that considerable societal costs are attributable to air pollution-related health hazards. Nevertheless, given the variations in the methodologies used to calculate the estimated costs (e.g. cost estimation methods and cost components included), and inter-country differences in demographic composition and health care systems, it is difficult to compare CAP estimates across studies and countries. To increase awareness concerning the air pollution-related burden of disease, and to build links to health policy analyses, future research efforts should be directed towards theoretically sound and comprehensive CAP estimates with use of rich data. In particular, a more explicit approach should be followed to deal with uncertainties in the estimations. Along with monetary estimates, future research should also report all physical impacts and source-specific cost estimates, and should attempt to estimate 'avoidable cost' using alternative counterfactual scenarios

Open access-böcker som vetenskapligt kommunikationsmedel i en svensk kontext : forskares attityder till den fritt tillgängliga digitala boken

Scholarly books still play an important role in some scientific disciplines, mainly the humanities and some social sciences. Publication in open access format is still not a requirement when it comes to scholarly books in Sweden, but will likely be in the near future. Academic libraries often play an important role when it comes to supporting researchers in scholarly communication and it is likely that this role will become even more prominent. Because of this, it is important from a library and information studies perspective that the libraries have a clear idea of the problems that face researchers in the context of open access book publishing. The aim of this master’s thesis is to study researcher’s perceptions of the ongoing technology shift within scholarly communication from printed books to openly accessible digital books, and also to investigate to what extent open access is established as the solution for the problems that researchers face in the context of scholarly communication through books. To study these questions, we have used the social construction of technology (SCOT) framework in combination with the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT). The SCOT-framework allows us to examine how open access is constructed as the solution to certain problems experienced by the relevant social group researchers. UTAUT has functioned as a tool to measure acceptance and identify central problems experienced by the researchers. We conducted a survey among researchers at a Swedish university about experience of and attitudes towards open access book publishing. In addition, we interviewed five researchers about attitudes and strategies towards publishing, the future of the academic book and open access. The study revealed four main problem areas associated with open access scholarly communication: 1) accessibility and dissemination, 2) quality control, 3) merit and prestige, 4) skepticism towards technology. In addition, we identified two more factors that are highly relevant in the context of open access book publishing: how digitization affects the book format, and other relevant social groups. Open access can only really be seen as a solution to the first problem, that of accessibility and dissemination, but is still generally accepted among researchers as the only way forward. Master’s thesis in library and information studies

The core of the Nordic health care system is not empty

<p class="Normal2"><span lang="EN-GB">The Nordic countries are well-known for their welfare states. A very important feature of the welfare state is that it aims at easy and equal access to adequate health care for the entire population. For many years, the Nordic systems were automatically viewed as very similar, and they were placed in the same group when the OECD classified health care systems around the world. However, close inspection soon reveals that there are important differences between the health care systems of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Consequently, it is perhaps no surprise that the Nordic countries fell into three different categories when the OECD revised its classification a few years ago. In this paper, we revisit this issue and argue that the most important similarity across the Nordic countries is the institutional context in which the health care sector is embedded. Nordic health care exists in a high-trust, high-taxation setting of small open economies. With this background, we find a set of important similarities in the manner in which health care is organized and financed in the Nordic countries. To evaluate the performance of the Nordic health care system, we compare a few health quality indicators in the Nordic countries with those of five non-Nordic similarly small open European economies with the same level of income. Overall, the Nordic countries seem to be performing relatively well. Whether they will continue to do so will depend to a large extent on whether the welfare state will continue to reform itself as it has in the past.</span></p

Heterogeneity in the Effect of Common Shocks on Healthcare Expenditure Growth

Health care expenditure growth is affected by important unobserved common shocks such as technological innovation, changes in sociological factors, shifts in preferences and the epidemiology of diseases. While common factors impact in principle all countries, their effect is likely to differ across countries. To allow for unobserved heterogeneity in the effects of common shocks, we estimate a panel data model of health care expenditure growth in 34 OECD countries over the years 1980 to 2012 where the usual fixed or random effects are replaced by a multifactor error structure. We address model uncertainty with Bayesian Model Averaging, to identify a small set of important expenditure drivers from 43 potential candidates. We establish 16 significant drivers of healthcare expenditure growth, including growth in GDP per capita and in insurance premiums, changes in financing arrangements and some institutional characteristics, expenditures on pharmaceuticals, population aging, costs of health administration, and inpatient care. Our approach allows us to derive estimates that are less subject to bias than in previous analyses, and provide robust evidence to policy makers on the drivers that were most strongly associated with the growth in health care expenditures over the past 32 years

Institutions, taxation, and market relationships in ancient Athens

This paper explores the institutional and economic development in ancient Athens from around 600 BC into the fourth century, a period during which the Athenians experienced oligarchy, tyranny, a gradually evolving but eventually far-reaching male democracy, followed by a return to more influence for the elite. Concomitantly, economic life changed qualitatively and quantitatively. Self-sufficient farming gradually gave way to market relationships and there was substantial economic growth. This analysis of institutional changes in Athens emphasizes the importance of credible commitments from those in power to other groups in society. It is furthermore likely that the increasing reliance on market relationships gradually transformed individual behaviour and individual beliefs, leading to changes in the formal and informal rules in society. Taxation played an important role: it pushed people into market relationships, illustrated the need for credible commitments, and helps to explain why foreigners were so prominent in trade in ancient Athens