Publications
This paper documents the determinants of real oil price in the global market based on an empirical model embedding transitory and permanent shocks. We find evidence of significant differences in the propagation mechanisms of transitory versus permanent disturbances, pointing to the importance of disentangling their distinct effects. Permanent supply shocks are found to be very influential in driving oil price fluctuations.
This paper analyzes the effect of a pay-as-you-go pension system on the evolution of capital and pollution, and on the efficiency of an environmental versus health policy. In an overlapping generations model, we introduce endogenous longevity that depends on pollution and health expenditures. Global dynamics may display multiple balanced growth paths (BGPs). We show that by discouraging savings, a policy that promotes the pension system enlarges the environmental poverty trap. More surprisingly, the environmental policy has contrasting effects according to the significance of the pension system. If it has a small size, a more environmentally-friendly policy enlarges the environmental poverty trap and leads to a rise in capital over pollution at the highest stationary equilibrium. In contrast, in economies where intergenerational solidarity is well developed, capital over pollution decreases at the highest BGP. In such a case, the environmental policy does not necessarily lead to a better longevity and growth.
Background
Integration of HIV services with other health services has been proposed as an important strategy to boost the sustainability of the global HIV response. We conducted a systematic and comprehensive synthesis of the existing scientific evidence on the impact of service integration on the HIV care cascade, health outcomes, and cost-effectiveness.
Methods and findings
We reviewed the global quantitative empirical evidence on integration published between 1 January 2010 and 10 September 2021. We included experimental and observational studies that featured both an integration intervention and a comparator in our review. Of the 7,118 unique peer-reviewed English-language studies that our search algorithm identified, 114 met all of our selection criteria for data extraction. Most of the studies (90) were conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in East Africa (55) and Southern Africa (24). The most common forms of integration were (i) HIV testing and counselling added to non-HIV services and (ii) non-HIV services added to antiretroviral therapy (ART). The most commonly integrated non-HIV services were maternal and child healthcare, tuberculosis testing and treatment, primary healthcare, family planning, and sexual and reproductive health services. Values for HIV care cascade outcomes tended to be better in integrated services: uptake of HIV testing and counselling (pooled risk ratio [RR] across 37 studies: 1.67 [95% CI 1.41–1.99], p < 0.001), ART initiation coverage (pooled RR across 19 studies: 1.42 [95% CI 1.16–1.75], p = 0.002), time until ART initiation (pooled RR across 5 studies: 0.45 [95% CI 0.20–1.00], p = 0.050), retention in HIV care (pooled RR across 19 studies: 1.68 [95% CI 1.05–2.69], p = 0.031), and viral suppression (pooled RR across 9 studies: 1.19 [95% CI 1.03–1.37], p = 0.025). Also, treatment success for non-HIV-related diseases and conditions and the uptake of non-HIV services were commonly higher in integrated services. We did not find any significant differences for the following outcomes in our meta-analyses: HIV testing yield, ART adherence, HIV-free survival among infants, and HIV and non-HIV mortality. We could not conduct meta-analyses for several outcomes (HIV infections averted, costs, and cost-effectiveness), because our systematic review did not identify sufficient poolable studies. Study limitations included possible publication bias of studies with significant or favourable findings and comparatively weak evidence from some world regions and on integration of services for key populations in the HIV response.
Conclusions
Integration of HIV services and other health services tends to improve health and health systems outcomes. Despite some scientific limitations, the global evidence shows that service integration can be a valuable strategy to boost the sustainability of the HIV response and contribute to the goal of ‘ending AIDS by 2030’, while simultaneously supporting progress towards universal health coverage.
The Southern Mediterranean region faces different environmental problems such as water scarcity, arable land depletion, air pollution, inadequate waste management, loss of biodiversity, declining marine resources, and degradation of coastal ecosystems. Despite the significant impact of these threats on the quality of life of the population, they are still not consistently part of the development strategies. South Med public policies are predominantly focused on salient threats to socio-economic development such as high unemployment (especially youth unemployment), poverty, income inequality, limited intergenerational mobility, food insecurity, political instability, and military and social conflicts. Current situation limits public policy in implementing widespread environmental instruments requiring alternative approaches. Among the latter, promising solution is offered by GreenTech startups, ecological initiatives that often take the form of small- and medium or social enterprises. They belong to a bottom-up approach where businesses are implemented as a response to current local needs of the society. Despite the high potential of this approach, it develops relatively slowly facing certain constraints due to limits of public policy. This brief focuses on the contribution of GreenTech start-ups to sustainable economic development in South Med countries. It provides an overview of the current opportunities for environmental innovations in South Med countries and the corresponding role of public policy. Then it explores the main refraining obstacles highlighting the experience of three start-ups from Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia working in the GreenTech field with a focus on waste and water management and apparel industries, main drivers of their growth, and challenges they are facing. Finally, it concludes with some recommendations to improve the existing public Green Tech Start-ups: Effective Solution to Sustainable Challenges in the South Med
Self-assessed health (SAH) is a widely used tool to estimate population health. However, the debate continues as to what exactly this ubiquitous measure of social science research means for policy conclusions. This study is aimed at understanding the tenability of the construct of SAH by simultaneously modelling SAH and clinical morbidity. Using data from 17 waves (2001–2017) of the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey, which captures repeated response for SAH and frequently updates information on clinical morbidity, we operationalise a recursive semi-ordered probit model. Our approach allows for the estimation of the distributional effect of clinical morbidity on perceived health. This study establishes the superiority of inferences from the recursive model. We illustrated the model use for examining the endogeneity problem of perceived health for SAH, contributing to population health research and public policy development, in particular, towards the organisation of health systems.
This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals’ propensity to engage in white-collar crime. We identify connections by campaign donations or direct friendships and use the 2007 French Presidential election as a marker of change in the value of political connections to the winning candidate. We compare the behavior of Directors of publicly listed companies who were connected to the future President to the behavior of other non-connected Directors, before and after the election. Consistent with the belief that connections to a powerful politician can protect someone from prosecution or punishment, we uncover indirect evidence that connected Directors are more likely to engage in suspicious insider trading after the election: Purchases by connected Directors trigger larger abnormal returns, connected Directors are less likely to comply with trading disclosure requirements in a timely fashion, and connected Directors trade closer in time to their firms’ announcements of results. (JEL: D72, G14, G18, G38, K22, K42)
Many countries are reallocating tasks and powers to more central levels of government. To identify centralization’s welfare effects, I use a difference-in-differences design that relies on time and cross-cantonal variation in the implementation of centralization reforms in Switzerland. I find that centralization provokes significant decreases in residents’ life satisfaction. I identify one mechanism driving the effect, namely the procedural disutility that individuals experience from having less influence over the formulation of political decisions. This effect is largest among individuals with higher expected benefits from being involved in the political decision process, with detrimental effects on local political participation.
Knightian uncertainty represents a situation in which it is no longer possible to form expectations about future events. We propose a method to directly measure Knightian uncertainty. Our approach relies on firm-level data and measures the share of firms that do not formalize expectations about their future demand. We construct the Knightian Uncertainty Indicator for Switzerland and show that the indicator is able to identify times of high uncertainty. We evaluate the indicator by comparing it to established uncertainty measures. We find that a one standard deviation innovation of the Knightian Uncertainty Indicator leads to a negative and persistent reduction of investment.
La part de l’aide humanitaire croît dans l’aide totale. Or les acteurs impliqués restent peu étudiés. Cet article documente la fragmentation de l’aide à un double niveau : celui des donneurs et celui des acteurs de terrains. Le jeu de délégation entre les deux peut réduire les effets négatifs de la fragmentation de l’aide. À partir de trois études de cas, le lien entre fragmentation, délégation et efficacité de l’aide humanitaire est illustré et les coûts et bénéfices potentiels de la délégation et de la fragmentation discutés.
In the US, black workers spend more time in unemployment, lose their jobs more rapidly, and earn lower wages than white workers. This paper quantifies the contributions of statistical discrimination, as portrayed by negative stereotyping and screening discrimination, to such employment and wage disparities. We develop an equilibrium search model of statistical discrimination with learning based on Moscarini (2005) and estimate it by indirect inference. We show that statistical discrimination alone cannot simultaneously explain the observed differences in residual wages and monthly job loss probabilities between black and white workers. However, a model with negative stereotyping, larger unemployment valuation and faster learning about the quality of matches for black workers can account for these facts. One implication of our findings is that black workers have larger returns to tenure. JEL Codes: J31, J64, J71.
