Joan Costa-Font
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 227930 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Joan Costa-Font |
| PRENOMES | Joan |
| SOBRENOME | Costa-Font |
| ASSINATURA | COSTA-FONT J |
| AFILIAÇÕES | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7174-7919 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 101 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 240 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 98 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2003 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 9 |
The Survival of the Royals
We study the effect of royal status—a historically rooted legal privilege enjoyed by hereditary monarchs and their families—on human longevity, a proxy of individuals' health capital. We disentangle the effect of royal status that encompassed serving as heads of state from that of other royal family members and compare it to their contemporary countrymen [Correction added on 16 January 2026, after first online publication: This sentence has been …
Altruism budgets or benevolence constraints? Pro-social behaviours across causes and domains
We examine the existence of altruism budgets (AB), which imply fixed monetary allocations to prosocial behaviours (PSB), and benevolence constraints (BC), which refer to wider limits to benevolent behaviour, giving rise to a substitution between PSB's across domains and causes, including volunteering and biological donations. Using longitudinal data from the Netherlands from 2003 to 2019, we exploit two exogenous shocks to charitable behaviour: t…
Unequal care, unequal health care? Gender differences in health care use after adult care access
Access to care among older adults can help identify unmet health needs and increase the use of health care, though in some cases it may substitute some forms of health care. We argue that the balance between these two effects is largely gender dependent: female spouses are more likely to act as informal caregivers and, as a result, are more likely to have neglected their own health needs. To examine this hypothesis, we exploit the variation intro…
Do Medical Health Ministers Make Different Health System Choices
Healthcare decision‐making is a highly specialized domain of government, particularly at the central or federal level, which may partly explain why medical professionals are sometimes appointed to ministerial roles within government cabinets. However, does a minister with medical expertise in healthcare make a difference in the outcomes and outputs of a health system? We examine original data on the medical doctor (MD) backgrounds of health minis…
More Than a Ban on Smoking? Behavioural Spillovers of Smoking Bans in the Workplace
We study the potential behavioural spillover effects of a workplace smoking ban (WSB) on a variety of health-related behaviours as well as on people who are not directly impacted by the bans. Drawing on quasi-experimental evidence comparing employed and unemployed individuals in Russia, we document that individuals who give up smoking are less likely to drink or cut back on alcohol consumption. Furthermore, we show that as expected the WSB exerts…
An unconsidered leave? Inequality aversion and the brexit referendum
This paper examines a behavioural explanation for the Brexit referendum result, namely the role of an individual’s inequality aversion (IA). We study whether the referendum result was an “unconsidered Leave” out of people’s low aversion to inequality. We use a representative sample of the UK population fielded in 2017, and analyse the extent to which lottery-based individual IA estimates predict their Brexit vote. We consider alternative potentia…
Cultural persistence and the ‘herbal medicine paradox
The use of herbal or traditional medicines has survived the proliferation of modern medicine. The phenomenon has been labeled as the ‘herbal medicines paradox’ (HMP). We study whether such HMP hypothesis can be explained by the persistence of attitudes across cultural boundaries. We undertake a secondary analysis of individual-level migration data to test the persistence of the use of herbal medicines in relation to norms in the person’s country …
Healthy self-interest? Health dependent preferences for fairer health care
Health status can alter individuals' social preferences, including individuals' preferences regarding a fair financing of health care. If individuals follow a healthy self-interested rationale, health improvements can weaken individuals' support for fairer health care financing, insofar as they perceive a reduced need for healthcare. Conversely, healthier people might anticipate facing greater opportunity costs if their health declines in an unfa…
Specific egalitarianism? Inequality aversion across domains
An individual’s inequality aversion (IA) is a central preference parameter that captures the welfare sacrifice from exposure to inequality. However, it is far from trivial how best to elicit IA estimates. Also, little is known about the behavioural determinants of IA and how they differ across domains such as income and health. Using representative surveys from England, this paper elicits comparable estimates of IA in the health and income domain…
Equal before luck? Well-being consequences of personal deprivation and transition
Discrimination backfires? Minority ethnic disparities in vaccine hesitancy
A number of minority ethnic groups (MEGs) exhibited persistent reluctance to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. This paper attempts to empirically identify and validate some of the contentious behavioral determinants for vaccine hesitancy (VH) that remain unexplained including the role of risk perceptions, trust in government institutions, and prior experiences of racism and trauma. We draw on unique longitudinal data from a minority-boosted sample th…
The welfare effects of time reallocation
Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a widely adopted practice implemented by over 70 countries to align sunlight with day‐to‐day activities and reduce energy demands. However, we do not have a clear knowledge of how it affects individuals' welfare. Using a regression discontinuity combined with a difference‐in‐differences design, we find that the Spring DST transition causes a significant decline in life satisfaction. By inducing a reallocation of time…
Cultural persistence of self-assessed health
Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy
Behavioural economics has become a popular way of tackling a broad range of issues in public policy. By presenting a more descriptive and possibly accurate representation of human behaviour than traditional economics, Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy tries to make sense of decisions that follow a wider conception of welfare, influenced by social norms and narratives, pro-social motivations and choice architectures which were general…
Income windfalls and overweight
We examine the impact of an income windfall (from a lottery win) on an individual's overweight and Body Mass Index (BMI). We use longitudinal data from the United Kingdom, where a large proportion of the population plays the lottery, and retrieve income effect estimates using time and individual specific fixed effects alongside a set of relevant controls. Although our findings suggest any income windfall may lead to a contemporaneous increase in …
‘Investing’ in care for old age? An examination of long-term care expenditure dynamics and its spillovers
We study the dynamic drivers of expenditure on long-term care (LTC) programmes, and more specifically, the effects of labour market participation of traditional unpaid caregivers (women aged 40 and older) on LTC spending, alongside the spillover effects of a rise in LTC expenditure on health care expenditures (HCE) and the economy (per capita GDP). Our estimates draw from a panel of more than a decade worth of expenditure data from a sample of OE…
Ideological spillovers across the Atlantic? Evidence from Trump's presidential election
How does exposure to Covid-19 influence health and income inequality aversion
We study individual aversion to health and income inequality in three European countries (the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy), its determinants and especially, the effects of exposure to three types of COVID-19 specific shocks affecting individuals’ employment status, their income and health. Next, using evidence of representative samples of the population in the UK, we compare levels of health- and income-inequality aversion in the UK betwee…
Comrades in the family? Soviet communism and demand for family insurance
We study how exposure to (Soviet) communism (EC), a political‐economic regime based on collectivist state planning, affected the preferences for family support, which we refer to as informal family insurance. Against the backdrop that ‘communism gave rise to the abolition of the family’, we document that it actually strengthened the preference (the demand) for informal family insurance without depressing individuals' preferences for social insura…
Health inequality and health insurance coverage
Trusting the Health System and Covid 19 Restriction Compliance
We examine the extent to which exposure to higher relative COVID-19 mortality (RM), influences health system trust (HST), and whether changes in HST explain the perceived ease of compliance with pandemic restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on evidence from two representative surveys covering all regions of 28 European countries before and after the first COVID-19 wave, and using a difference in differences strategy together with Co…
Mobility restrictions and alcohol use during lockdown
Unexpected mobility disruptions during lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19 became 'tipping points' with the potential to alter pre-pandemic routines sensitive to socialisation. This paper investigates the impact of lockdown exposure on alcohol consumption. We document two findings using information from the Google Mobility Report and longitudinal data from the Understanding Society survey (UKHLS) in the United Kingdom. First, we find a sha…
Does exposure to democracy decrease health inequality
Exposure to (a liberal) democracy can have an impact on both the political attention and visibility of the needs of marginalized populations, as well as the design of health policies that can influence the distribution of population health. This paper investigates the effect of exposure to democracy, that is, the number of years spent in a democracy as measured by democracy indexes, on various measures of inequality in self-reported health across…
Behavioural Incentive Design for Health Policy
Pierre Salmon
Ageing in Place'? Exploring Elderly People's Housing Preferences in Spain
The greater visibility of societal ageing and higher share of individuals with disabilities have created new challenges for housing and urban policies. Housing needs can influence individual choice of living environment and the willingness to undertake housing improvements. This is especially relevant in southern European countries where the family is still the main provider of care for the elderly. This study makes an empirical analysis of the u…
Housing assets and the socio-economic determinants of health and disability in old age
Decomposing cross-country differences in levels of obesity and overweight
Political Competition and Pork-Barrel Politics in the Allocation of Public Investment in Mexico
Future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom
This paper reports findings from a European Commission funded study of future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, and presents projections of future long-term care expenditure in the four countries under a number of assumptions about the future. Macro-simulation (or cell-based) models were used to make comparable projections based on a set of common assumptions. A central base-case served as a point of comp…
Intergenerational and socioeconomic gradients of child obesity
Optimism and the perceptions of new risks
While many risks, especially new ones, are not objectively quantifiable, individuals still form perceptions of risks using incomplete or unclear evidence about the true nature of those risks. In the case of well known risks, such as smoking, individuals perceive risks to be smaller for themselves than others, exhibiting ‘optimism bias’. Although existing evidence supports optimism bias occurring in the case of risks about which individuals are fa…
Modelling an entitlement to long-term care services for older people in Europe
As the numbers of older people rise in Europe, the importance of long-term care services in terms of numbers of users and expenditures can be expected to grow. This article examines the implications for expenditure in four countries of a national entitlement to long-tem care services for all older people, based on assessed dependency. It is based on a European Commission-funded cross-national study, which makes projections to 2050 of long-term ca…
A Health ‘Kuznets’ Curve’? Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Evidence on Concentration Indices
The distribution of income related health inequalities appears to exhibit changing patterns when both developing countries and developed countries are examined. This paper tests for the existence of a health Kuznets' curve; that is, an inverse U-shape pattern between economic developments (as measured by GDP per capita) and income-related health inequalities (as measured by concentration indices). We draw upon both cross sectional (the World Heal…
What lies behind socio-economic inequalities in obesity in Spain? A decomposition approach
Health systems futures
Projecting Long-Term Care Expenditure in Four European Union Member States
Devolution and the Interregional Inequalities in Health and Healthcare in Spain
Costa-Font J. and Rico A. (2006) Devolution and the interregional inequalities in health and healthcare in Spain, Regional Studies 40, 875–887. The desirability of devolution of government responsibilities is often questioned on the grounds of regional cohesion concerns. This feature is especially relevant in welfare policy areas such as healthcare services given their impact on an individual's well-being. This paper examines the effects of healt…
Regional healthcare decentralization in unitary states
Does regional decentralization threaten the commitment to regional equality in government outcomes and outputs? We attempt to shed a light on this question by drawing on unique evidence from the largest European unitary states to have engaged in countrywide health system decentralization: Italy and Spain. We estimate, decompose and run a counterfactual analysis of regional inequality in government output (health expenditure per capita) and outcom…
Housing-related Well-being in Older People
With the ageing of populations in Europe, one can expect new pressures on the existing housing stock to accommodate those older individuals with mobility problems; at the same time, housing assets are expected to be called upon to guarantee financial security for older homeowners. The accessibility and suitability of housing, and the financial security that housing provides, may exert an independent influence on well-being; to what extent either …
Vertical Competition in the Spanish National Health System (NHS)
Divided We Survive? Multilevel Governance during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy and Spain
We compare the intergovernmental health system responses to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy and Spain, two countries where healthcare is managed at the regional level and the impact of the first wave was highly localized. However, whereas in Italy the regional government allowed for a passively accepted central level of coordination without restricting autonomy ("descentralised coordinantion"), in Spain, the healthcare system was…
Voting Up? The Effects of Democracy and Franchise Extension on Human Stature
We study the effect of the spread of democracy on population health in 15 European countries since the middle of the 19th century, and more specifically the average height of adult males by five‐year birth cohort, and we estimate the effect of transitions to democracy using within‐country variation. We find that the advent of democracy increased average height by about 0.7 cm. When we also account for the extension of the franchise to women, this…
Does local democracy improve public health interventions? Evidence from India
Health care decisions in many low‐income countries often require a close political agency relationship between healthcare decision makers and constituents. This is especially the case for maternal and child care as well as preventative interventions when resources are scarce. This article examines the effect of the introduction of the National Rural Health Mission in India, introducing Village Health, Sanitation and Nutrition Committees (VHSNC), …
Housing Wealth and Housing Decisions in Old Age
Population ageing brings new challenges to long-term household economic decisions. In the event of old-age dependency, housing assets become a key self-insurance device. However, little empirical evidence has been reported regarding an individual's expectations of having to use their housing wealth for such a purpose. This paper draws upon two complementary data sources to empirically examine: (1) the influence of housing assets on an individual'…
Exploring the pathways of inequality in health, health care access and financing in decentralized Spain
The regional organization of the Spanish national health system offers a ‘unique field’ for exploring the sources of health inequalities as well as for testing the effects of political decentralization on health and healthcare inequalities. Drawing from the results of an empirical analysis where inequalities in three dimensions of health (outcome), healthcare (access) and healthcare payments (financing) are estimated, this article first explores …
The Design of the Long-Term Care System in Spain
The provision and financing of long-term care (LTC) in Spain has only recently become a policy concern. However, welfare policy reforms show the need to anticipate the effects of a transition from the traditional ‘family-based’ model of care (78 per cent of Spanish elders who are disabled are treated by their own families) to a modern ‘community-based’ model. This paper examines the current models of providing and funding long-term care in Spain …
Caregiving across generations
Fatal Underfunding? Explaining Covid-19 Mortality in Spanish Nursing Homes
The COVID-19 pandemic has exerted a disproportionate effect on older European populations living in nursing homes. This article discusses the 'fatal underfunding hypothesis', and reports an exploratory empirical analysis of the regional variation in nursing home fatalities during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, one of the European countries with the highest number of nursing home fatalities. We draw on descriptive and multivaria…
The weight of patriarchy? Gender obesity gaps in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena)
Political Competition and Pork-Barrel Politics in the Allocation of Public Investment in Mexico
Spanish Regions and the Macroeconomic Benefits of the European Monetary Union
C OSTA-I- F ONT J. and T REMOSA-I- B ALCELLS R. (2003) Spanish regions and the macroeconomic benefits of the European Monetary Union, Reg. Studies 37 , 217-226. This paper empirically examines the extent to which regions within the same country differ in their exposure to a common currency. We estimate an Optimum Currency Areas (OCA) index based on the main theoretical macroeconomic determinants. We use data from the Spanish regions for the perio…
Power Rather Than Path Dependency? The Dynamics of Institutional Change under Health Care Federalism
Proposals for government decentralization rank high on the political reform agenda of health systems worldwide. Their impact on welfare state performance and change, however, is still under theoretical scrutiny. This article examines the impact of devolution on the construction of the Spanish National Health Service (NHS) in an attempt to shed some light on this debate. Against widespread claims of path dependency, we argue that the specific natu…
Obesity and the incidence of chronic diseases in Spain
The Design of the Long-Term Care System in Spain
The provision and financing of long-term care (LTC) in Spain has only recently become a policy concern. However, welfare policy reforms show the need to anticipate the effects of a transition from the traditional ‘family-based’ model of care (78 per cent of Spanish elders who are disabled are treated by their own families) to a modern ‘community-based’ model. This paper examines the current models of providing and funding long-term care in Spain …
Ambivalent’ individual preferences towards biotechnology in the European Union
Significant ambivalence is found when examining the explanatory dimensions of attitudes towards biotechnology in the European Union; individuals' decision—making is influenced by their perception of significant benefits and risks as well as moral concerns. In quantitatively analyzing the determinants of attitudes, we argue that it might be misleading to interpret attitudes towards new biotechnology applications without taking into account the exi…
Is the Impact of Public Investment Neutral Across the Regional Income Distribution? Evidence from Mexico
This article investigates the contribution of public investment to the reduction of regional inequalities, with a specific application to Mexico. We examine the impact of public investment according to the position of each region in the conditional distribution of regional income by using quantile regression as an empirical technique. The results confirm the hypothesis that regional inequalities can indeed be attributed to the regional distributi…
Future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom
This paper reports findings from a European Commission funded study of future long-term care expenditure in Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, and presents projections of future long-term care expenditure in the four countries under a number of assumptions about the future. Macro-simulation (or cell-based) models were used to make comparable projections based on a set of common assumptions. A central base-case served as a point of comp…
Means Testing and the Heterogeneity of Housing Assets
The access to publicly funded long-term care (LTC) in Spain has been traditionally rationed through the use of means tests based on individuals’ current income and needs. However, individuals’ wealth, primarily housing assets, is progressively taken into account. Parallel to this feature, the responsibilities for the organization of LTC services have been devolved to region-states – autonomous communities (ACs), giving rise to some regional heter…
Vertical Competition in the Spanish National Health System (NHS)
Devolution and the Interregional Inequalities in Health and Healthcare in Spain
Costa-Font J. and Rico A. (2006) Devolution and the interregional inequalities in health and healthcare in Spain, Regional Studies 40, 875–887. The desirability of devolution of government responsibilities is often questioned on the grounds of regional cohesion concerns. This feature is especially relevant in welfare policy areas such as healthcare services given their impact on an individual's well-being. This paper examines the effects of healt…
Design limitations of long-term care insurance schemes
Social and demographic changes are gradually transforming the way Western societies cope with old-age dependency, in particular the provision of long-term care (LTC). In response to the need for formal care services and financing instruments, this study examines a range of both private and public insurance tools. As a general rule, LTC insurance is markedly underdeveloped. Furthermore, in southern European countries, the role of the public sector…
Revisiting the 'Fat and Jolly' hypothesis
The hypothesis of the reciprocal determination of obesity and depression (OD) epidemics, contrasts with the anecdotal wisdom of a person being ‘jolly and fat’, and calls for a better understanding of any underpinning socioenvironmental determinants. This paper deals with the influence of socioenvironmental factors (mainly social and personal interactions) in explaining the empirical association between OD. We draw upon a unique representative hea…
Generational effects and gender height dimorphism in contemporary Spain
Housing assets and the socio-economic determinants of health and disability in old age
Modelling an entitlement to long-term care services for older people in Europe
As the numbers of older people rise in Europe, the importance of long-term care services in terms of numbers of users and expenditures can be expected to grow. This article examines the implications for expenditure in four countries of a national entitlement to long-tem care services for all older people, based on assessed dependency. It is based on a European Commission-funded cross-national study, which makes projections to 2050 of long-term ca…
What lies behind socio-economic inequalities in obesity in Spain? A decomposition approach
Projecting Long-Term Care Expenditure in Four European Union Member States
Institutional change, innovation and regulation failure
English Scant evidence has been reported on the influence of institutional change in drug market regulation. This article draws on the evidence of Spanish drug regulation (1980-2005) with the aim of examining whether institutional (lack of) change affected (i) regulatory innovation and (ii) the propensity of regulatory failure (rent seeking). We find that the prevailing institutional design of Spanish drug regulation has been prone to regulatory …
Decomposing body mass index gaps between Mediterranean countries
Risk Attitudes and the Demand for Private Health Insurance
Captivity to a mainstream public insurer, is hypothesized to constrain the choice of purchasing private health insurance, by influencing risk attitudes. Namely, risk averse individuals are more likely to stay captive to the National Health System (NHS). To empirically test this hypothesis we use a small scale database from Catalonia to explore the determinants of private health insurance (PHI) purchase under different forms of captivity along wit…
Optimism and the perceptions of new risks
While many risks, especially new ones, are not objectively quantifiable, individuals still form perceptions of risks using incomplete or unclear evidence about the true nature of those risks. In the case of well known risks, such as smoking, individuals perceive risks to be smaller for themselves than others, exhibiting ‘optimism bias’. Although existing evidence supports optimism bias occurring in the case of risks about which individuals are fa…
Simultaneity, Asymmetric Devolution and Economic Incentives in Spanish Regional Elections
This paper addresses two hypotheses. The first is that holding two or more elections at the same time is an institutional device to legitimize newly created regional governments by ensuring an acceptable electoral turnout at their formation. The second is that regional elections provide a participation incentive in relatively poor regions. The study draws upon evidence from the first round of Spanish regional elections (1980–99) when Spanish devo…
Exploring the pathways of inequality in health, health care access and financing in decentralized Spain
The regional organization of the Spanish national health system offers a ‘unique field’ for exploring the sources of health inequalities as well as for testing the effects of political decentralization on health and healthcare inequalities. Drawing from the results of an empirical analysis where inequalities in three dimensions of health (outcome), healthcare (access) and healthcare payments (financing) are estimated, this article first explores …
Ageing in Place'? Exploring Elderly People's Housing Preferences in Spain
The greater visibility of societal ageing and higher share of individuals with disabilities have created new challenges for housing and urban policies. Housing needs can influence individual choice of living environment and the willingness to undertake housing improvements. This is especially relevant in southern European countries where the family is still the main provider of care for the elderly. This study makes an empirical analysis of the u…
Economics (78 obras) · Medicine (49 obras) · Political science (44 obras) · Demographic economics (39 obras) · Psychology (31 obras) · Business (29 obras) · Sociology (29 obras) · Global Health Care Issues (28 obras) · Economic growth (27 obras) · Demography (24 obras)