Now showing 1 - 10 of 21
  • Publication
    Income and Substitution Effects of a Disability Insurance Reform
    Disability insurance (DI) systems are widely criticized for their inherent work disincentives. This paper evaluates the effects of a Swiss DI reform that aims to lower DI benefits for a group of exisiting DI beneficiaries and introduces an additional level to the DI benefit schedule. The reform has only modest effects on earnings and employment but increases the disability degree of those threatened by a DI benefit decline. We estimate bounds on the income and substitution effects by employing the principal stratification framework. The income effect is quantitatively important, whereas the substitution effect is smaller and has bounds that include zero. The evidence suggests that caseworkers helped the insured with low labor market attachment to maintain a full DI benefit.
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    DOI: 10.1016
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    Financial work incentives for disability benefit recipients: lessons from a randomised field experiment
    (Springer Open, 2015-09) ; ; ;
    Staubli, Stefan
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    Disability insurance (DI) beneficiaries lose part or all of their benefits if earnings exceed certain thresholds (“cash-cliffs”). This implicit taxation is considered the prime reason for the low number of beneficiaries who expand work and reduce benefit receipt. We analyse a conditional cash programme that incentivises work related reductions of disability benefits in Switzerland. Four thousand DI beneficiaries received an offer to claim up to CHF 72,000 (USD 77,000) if they expand work and reduce benefits. Initial reactions to the programme announcement, measured by call-back rates, are modest. By the end of the field phase, the take-up rate is only 0.5 %.
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    Scopus© Citations 15
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    Evaluating Nationwide Health Interventions : Malawi's insecticide-treated-net distribution programme
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014-02) ;
    Wunsch, Conny
    We evaluate Malawi's main malaria prevention campaign, a nationwide insecticide-treated-net distribution scheme, in terms of its effect on infant mortality. Methodologically, evaluating such nationwide health interventions is particularly difficult. There is no contemporaneous comparison group that has not been subject to the intervention. Moreover, common environmental trends, the availability of new drugs and a variety of other health improving measures used at the same time imply that the often advocated before-after estimator is not a good choice. We propose an alternative estimator that can be used if the intervention influences health through its effect on individual health-seeking behaviour but has no other effect on the outcome. We also suggest some plausibility checks and falsification tests to assess the validity of the identifying assumptions that we impose in applications. Using the estimator proposed we find that Malawi's insecticide-treated-net distribution campaign reduced all-cause child mortality by about 1 percentage point, which corresponds to about 40% of the total reduction in infant mortality from 8.2% to 5.4% over the study period.
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    Scopus© Citations 3
  • Publication
    A Short Note on Economic Development and Socioeconomic Inequality in Female Body Weight
    (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2013-07-19)
    The origin of the obesity epidemic in developing countries is still poorly understood. It has been prominently argued that economic development provides a natural interpretation of the growth in obesity. This paper tests the main aggregated predictions of the theoretical framework to analyze obesity. Average body weight and health inequality should be associated with economic development. Both hypotheses are confirmed: we find higher average female body weight in economically more advanced countries. In relatively nondeveloped countries, obesity is a phenomenon of the socioeconomic elite. With economic development, obesity shifts toward individuals with lower socioeconomic status
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    Scopus© Citations 17
  • Publication
    Would you train me with my mental illness? Evidence from a discrete choice experiment
    (ICMPE, 2013-06)
    The low employment among people with disabilities in general, and mental illnesses in particular, generates high costs to society. Supported Education and Employment - a rehabilitation method that directly places patients in a realistic work environment - has been shown to be effective in increasing competitive employment for people with mental disorders. Employers are the key players because they provide the workplace and any ongoing training needed. Supported Education and Employment has not yet been widely implemented since it is difficult to find employers willing to provide these workplaces. Using a discrete choice experiment, this paper analyzes barriers to do so. Our results confirm that the overall willingness to accept employees with mental disorders is currently relatively low and that non-cognitive dysfunctions are the main deterrents.
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  • Publication
    A consistent partnership formation model: Application to the United Kingdom
    (Elsevier, 2012-01-01)
    Artzrouni, Marc
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    We apply a consistent sexual partnership formation model which hinges on the assumption that one gender's choices drives the process (male or female dominant model). The other gender's behaviour is imputed. The model is fitted to UK sexual behaviour data and applied to a simple incidence model of HSV-2. With a male dominant model (which assumes accurate male reports on numbers of partners) the modelled incidences of HSV-2 are 77% higher for men and 50% higher for women than with a female dominant model (which assumes accurate female reports). Although highly stylized, our simple incidence model sheds light on the inconsistent
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    Scopus© Citations 1
  • Publication
    The Virgin HIV Puzzle : Can Misreporting Account for the High Proportion of HIV Cases in Self-reported Virgins?
    (Oxford University Press, 2011-01-01)
    It is widely believed that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted in Sub-Saharan Africa. This claim is inconsistent with national representative data from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland which reveals that a significant proportion of HIV infections occurred in adolescents who claim to be virgins. Two explanations for this observation have been proposed: adolescents misreport sexual status or non-sexual risks are more prevalent than previously asserted. This paper empirically uncovers the implicit assumptions underlying this discussion, by estimating the proportion of sexually transmitted HIV infections assuming that misreporting is irrelevant, and the proportion of misreporting necessary to conclude that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted. It shows that under the no-misreporting assumption, 70% of HIV cases in the respective sample of unmarried adolescent women is not due to sexual transmission. The assumption that HIV is predominantly sexually transmitted is valid only if more than 55% of unmarried adolescent women who are sexually active have misreported sexual activity status. This research is designed to gain better understanding on the importance of different transmission modes. This is important to design combination prevention to achieve maximum impact on HIV prevention
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    Scopus© Citations 3
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    Do Men and Women Have the Same Average Number of Lifetime Partners?
    (Taylor & Francis, 2010-11-05) ;
    Artzrouni, Marc
    It is generally thought that for sake of consistency men and women must have the same average number of lifetime partners. However, this is not the case in general. When men have younger partners, women enter sexual relationships more quickly than men and have a higher number of lifetime partners. A male dominant model applied to UK data on the male rate of entry into a sexual relationship and the male partnership formation function shows that in a stationary population (zero growth rate) women have 9.1% more partners than men. In a stable population with an intrinsic growth rate of 2% and a larger but still plausible difference between the ages of partners, women have 24.6% more partners than men. Given that in sex surveys men report more partners than women, the resulting bias in estimated numbers of partners may therefore be larger than previously thought
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    Scopus© Citations 2
  • Publication
    Maternal Healthcare and the Spread of AIDS in Burkina Faso and Cameroon
    (Longwoods, 2007-10-01)
    This paper analyzes whether exposure to maternal healthcare is associated with a higher risk of HIV infection. Using data provided by Demographic and Health Surveys in Burkina Faso and Cameroon, the paper finds that women are 26% to 78% more likely to be HIV positive if they received tetanus toxoid injections during their last pregnancy. The analysis does not provide empirical evidence for the hypotheses that this association might be due to reverse causality, omitted variables or self-selection.
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    Scopus© Citations 8
  • Publication
    Failure to use auto-disable syringes in immunization services is associated with HIV prevalence: an international ecological analysis
    (Elsevier Science, 2007-03) ;
    Brody, Stuart
    Purpose A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that unsafe health care is an important factor driving the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. We investigate whether nonuse of autodisable syringes and other health care indicators predict national HIV prevalence. Methods These ecologic analyses use countries as study units in descriptive analyses and regression analyses. Two sets of observations are used: (i) all low- and lower-middle-income countries, and (ii) all sub-Saharan African countries with available data. Results In the descriptive analysis, health care indicators (health expenditures, vaccination coverage, and use of autodisable syringes) have a U-shaped relationship with HIV prevalence in the larger sample. Greater density of physicians is associated with lower HIV prevalence. In sub-Saharan Africa, antenatal care coverage is associated with increasing HIV prevalence. In regression analyses, nonuse of autodisable syringes is associated robustly with greater HIV prevalence in all models. For the larger sample, greater HIV prevalence also is associated with higher Gini Index, less female economic activity, less urbanization, and less percentage of Muslims. In sub-Saharan Africa, tetanus vaccination coverage has a U-shaped association with HIV prevalence. Low physician density and percentage of Muslims are associated with HIV prevalence. Other economic and health care indicators and epidemic age are not significant correlates of HIV prevalence. Conclusions This analysis adds to the other sources of evidence for health care transmission of HIV (in sub-Saharan Africa and regions with similar epidemiologic characteristics) by showing that health care indicators (failure to use autodisable syringes and greater tetanus coverage) are associated robustly with greater HIV prevalence. We recommend that resources be reallocated to address health care transmission of HIV/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.
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