SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccines give rise to positive externalities on population health, society and the economy in addition to protecting the health of vaccinated individuals. Hence, the social value of such a ...vaccine exceeds its market value. This paper estimates the willingness to pay (WTP) for a hypothetical SARS‐CoV‐2 vaccine (or shadow prices), in four countries, namely the United States (US), the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy during the first wave of the pandemic when COVID‐19 vaccines were in development but not yet approved. WTP estimates are elicited using a payment card method to avoid “yea saying” biases, and we study the effect of protest responses, sample selection bias, as well as the influence of trust in government and risk exposure when estimating the WTP. Our estimates suggest evidence of an average value of a hypothetical vaccine of 100–200 US dollars once adjusted for purchasing power parity. Estimates are robust to a number of checks.
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 outcome (health system satisfaction) during the expansion of healthcare decentralization in both countries. We find no evidence of an increase in regional inequalities in outcomes and outputs in the examined period. Inequalities are accounted for by differences in health system design and management by regional governments.
We use quasi-experimental evidence on the expansion of the public subsidization of long-term care to examine the causal effect of a change in caregiving affordability on the delivery of hospital ...care. More specifically, we examine a reform that both introduced a new caregiving allowance and expanded the availability of publicly funded home care services, on both hospital admissions (both on the internal and external margin) and length of stay. We find robust evidence of a reduction in both hospital admissions and utilization among both those receiving a caregiving allowance and, albeit less intensely, among beneficiaries of publicly funded home care, which amounts to 11% of total healthcare costs. These effects were stronger when regions had an operative regional health and social care coordination plan in place. Consistently, a subsequent reduction in the subsidy, five years after its implementation, is found to significantly attenuate such effects. We investigate a number of potential mechanisms, and show a number of falsification and robustness checks.
Abstract
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 insurance. We exploit cross‐country and cohort variation in EC on more than 314,000 individuals living in 33 Central and Eastern European countries, among which 14 had been subject to communist regimes. We estimate that EC gave rise to 9.6 percentage point (pp) increase in the preference for family care for older parent and 4.3 pp increase in the support (both financial and nonfinancial) for children. These effects are explained by the strengthening of social and family networks that resulted from the erosion of generalized, interpersonal and institutional trust, rather than by ‘indoctrination effects’ during Soviet communism times.
Social identity has become accepted as a key concept underpinning the endogeneity of economic behaviour and preferences. It is important in explaining attitudes towards redistribution and pro‐social ...behaviour. We examine how economic theory measures social identity and its effects on preferences towards redistribution, social solidarity and redistributive institutions. Empirical evidence indicates that social identity carries weight in explaining the presence of social preferences and attitudes towards redistributive institutions.
Background and Purpose
Voltage sensitivity is a common feature of many membrane proteins, including some G‐protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). However, the functional consequences of voltage ...sensitivity in GPCRs are not well understood.
Experimental approach
In this study, we investigated the voltage sensitivity of the post‐synaptic metabotropic glutamate receptor mGlu5 and its impact on synaptic transmission. Using biosensors and electrophysiological recordings in non‐excitable HEK293T cells or neurons.
Key Results
We found that mGlu5 receptor function is optimal at resting membrane potentials. We observed that membrane depolarization significantly reduced mGlu5 receptor activation, Gq‐PLC/PKC stimulation, Ca2+ release and mGlu5 receptor‐gated currents through transient receptor potential canonical, TRPC6, channels or glutamate ionotropic NMDA receptors. Notably, we report a previously unknown activity of the NMDA receptor at the resting potential of neurons, enabled by mGlu5.
Conclusions and Implications
Our findings suggest that mGlu5 receptor activity is directly regulated by membrane voltage which may have a significant impact on synaptic processes and pathophysiological functions.
The mGlu5 receptor function is optimal at resting cell potential. Membrane depolarization stabilizes an inactive‐like conformation of mGlu5 receptor and decreases agonist‐induced Gq protein activation, Ca2+ release from intracellular stores and gating of NMDA and TRPC6 channels.
Ideological spillovers refer to the modification of an individual's core beliefs after learning about other people's beliefs. We study one specific international ideological spillover, namely, the ...effect of the unexpected election of a United States (US) president (Donald Trump on the 9th of November 2016), who openly questioned the so-called ‘core liberal consensus’, on European's core political beliefs. Using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) around the election event, we show that the Trump presidential election (TPE) gave rise to a ‘backlash effect’. That is, it steered core European beliefs in two specific domains, making Europeans more favourable to (i) globalisation and (ii) international mobility (about 10% change in the overall Likert scale range of the statement that immigrants contribute to a country). Contrasting with the hypotheses of ‘belief contagion’, we do not find evidence that TPE steered illiberal beliefs. Furthermore, TPE improved (deteriorated) the view Europeans had of their own country (the United States).
•Donald Trump's unexpected presidential election affected European attitudes.•Europeans expressed a backlash against Trump's populist rhetoric.•Europeans interviewed in the days after the election become more liberal.•More think globalization is an opportunity and that immigrants contribute a lot.•We find no effect around Trump's inauguration or first week in office.
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), a self‐governance mechanism to strengthen the political agency in village health care decision making. We study the effect of exposure to VHSNC on both maternal and preventative child health care. We find that exposure to VHSNC's increase the utilization of several maternal health care services, but does not systematically increase the uptake of preventive health care. The effect of VHSNC is more intense in larger villages and areas closer to district headquarters, and is driven by an increase in the utilization of the public healthcare network.
In the last decades, several European health systems have abandoned their vertically integrated health care in favour of some form of managed competition (MC), either in a centralised or ...decentralised format. However, during a pandemic, MC may put health systems under additional strain as they are designed to follow some form of ‘organisational self-interest’, and hence face reduced incentives for both provider coordination (e.g. temporary hospital close down, change in the case-mix), and information sharing. We illustrate our argument using evidence for the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak in Italy during March and April 2020, which calls for the development of ‘coordination mechanisms’ at times of a health emergency.
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