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Jeanrenaud, Claude
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Jeanrenaud, Claude
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Professeur.e émérite
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Claude.Jeanrenaud@unine.ch
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Voici les éléments 1 - 2 sur 2
- PublicationAccès libreThree essays on the socioeconomics of gambling and pathological gamblingABSTRACT :
In Switzerland, approximately 1.5% of the population suffers from disordered gambling behaviour. This rate has remained relatively stable over the last decade. Thus, a significant number of individuals must cope with the severe adverse consequences that are associated with this disorder: most notably, depression, debt, divorce, violence and criminality. The efforts to address this public health concern have included several prevention measures that have been implemented at gambling venues and mass media campaigns that have been designed to inform the public about the addictive potential of this activity. Although these efforts appear to have prevented the prevalence of gambling from increasing despite the significant increase in opportunities for gambling, such efforts have not led to a decrease in gambling disorders. There may be several reasons for these results. First, a lack of concern (and thus funding) in the public sector may prevent efficient prevention measures from being implemented. Second, a lack of knowledge regarding the characteristics of at-risk groups may prevent these measures from targeting the appropriate individuals. Finally, because gambling operators encounter an obvious conflict of interest in enforcing measures that are intended to prevent problem gambling, these operators may be less resolute than one would hope in attempting to address the issue.
Through this dissertation, I aim to enhance the research on gambling and its consequences. For this purpose, the dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first part consists of a description of problem gambling and its health-related consequences. Subsequently, the various prevention measures that can be implemented are discussed. The first section concludes with a description of the gambling landscape in Switzerland. The second portion of the dissertation consists of three empirical essays that provide insight into the consequences and characteristics of problem and pathological gambling and the gambling tax issue. The first essay fills the gap in the literature regarding the social cost of gambling; previous studies have consistently failed to estimate the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) cost associated with gambling and thus significantly underestimate the problem. In Switzerland, I estimated this cost to be more than CHF 3,800 per year per pathological gambler. This result implies that the loss of quality of life resulting from gambling generates more than 60% of the total social cost. The second study is designed to describe the characteristics of gamblers and problem gamblers. First, I highlight the differences between gamblers and non-gamblers. The individuals in the first group are notably more likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours, such as alcohol abuse, drug consumption or tobacco smoking. Subsequently, I compare recreational gamblers with pathological gamblers and find significant differences in terms of their socio-economic characteristics. Moreover, disordered gamblers are at a greater risk for smoking and suffering from depression. Interestingly, the type of gambling activity has a significant influence on one’s risk of developing a gambling problem; internet gamblers exhibit a seven-fold increase in risk. The third paper analyses the equity principle and the tax on gambling activities. In this study, I analyse the regressivity of this tax using gambling expenditures.
The results consistently show that lower-income individuals devote a higher proportion of their revenues to gambling than do higher-income individuals. - PublicationAccès libreAnalyse comparative des méthodes économiques d'évaluation de la qualité de la vie: une application à la lombalgie chronique(2005)
; Cette thèse est une étude méthodologique portant sur l'évaluation contingente (EC), le standard gamble (SG) et le time trade-off (TTO), trois instruments utilisés en économie pour évaluer la qualité de vie liée à la santé. L'interrogation qui sous-tend l'ensemble de la recherche est : le SG, le TTO et l'EC sont-ils de " bons " instruments de mesure de la qualité de vie ? Le sujet est d'importance puisque les valeurs auxquelles aboutissent ces techniques d'enquête sont utilisées dans les évaluations économiques, en particulier les analyses coûts-bénéfices ou coûts-utilité, et que des décisions d'allocation des ressources sont prises sur cette base. La thèse commence par un état des connaissances quant à la performance empirique de chacune des méthodes, examinant tour à tour leur acceptabilité, applicabilité, robustesse, logique interne, validité et leurs biais. Elle examine ensuite trois questions particulières, qui s'articulent autour des notions de validité et de biais : 1) Pourquoi le standard gamble produit-il des valeurs systématiquement supérieures à celles du time trade-off ? 2) A quoi attribuer le faible pouvoir explicatif des modèles statistiques qui expliquent les dispositions à payer que les enquêtés annoncent dans le cadre d'une évaluation contingente ? 3) Dans le standard gamble et le time trade-off, les indices d'utilité ne reflètent-ils que l'utilité associée à un état de santé ou incorporent-ils également des éléments sans lien avec celui-ci ? Un questionnaire, appliquant chacune des trois méthodes à la lombalgie chronique, a été conçu et administré à un échantillon de personnes issues de la population générale. Les données issues de cette enquête ont fourni le matériel pour les analyses empiriques. Les résultats montrent que les indices d'utilité SG et TTO sont des indicateurs imparfaits de la qualité de vie. Le SG, en particulier, est influencé par l'attitude des répondants à l'égard du risque, un élément qui amène une distorsion dans la mesure de l'utilité. La recherche a aussi mis en évidence l'importance de recueillir davantage d'information sur la manière dont les individus raisonnent. De manière générale, cette thèse apporte une contribution à la connaissance de ces méthodes et de leurs limites. Elle conclut sur la nécessité de mieux comprendre les processus intellectuels et émotionnels suivis par les répondants afin de pouvoir améliorer les techniques existantes, voire en développer de nouvelles., This thesis is a methodological study on the contingent valuation (CV), the standard gamble (SG) and the time trade-off (TTO) methods, three techniques used in economics to assess health-related quality of life. The question underlying the whole research is: are CV, SG and TTO "good" instruments to measure the utility associated to a health state? The theme is important since the values obtained using these survey techniques are used in economic evaluations, especially in cost-utility or cost-benefit analysis, and meaning that decisions on resources allocation are based on their results. The text first reviews the empirical performance of each of the methods, examining successively their acceptability, practicality, reliability, internal consistency, validity and biases. Three specific questions are then addressed: 1) Why are the utility scores produced by the SG systematically higher than the scores obtained using a TTO? 2) What are the reasons for the low explanatory power of the statistical model explaining the respondents' willingness-to-pay in a CV study? 3) Do the SG and TTO utility scores only reflect the utility associated to the health state under consideration or do they incorporate elements that are not related to it? A survey, applying each of the three methods to chronic low back pain, was developed and addressed to a sample of the population living in the French-speaking Switzerland. It provided the data for the empirical analyses. Results show evidence that the SG and the TTO utility scores are imperfect indicators of the utility attached to a health state. It shows in particular that respondents' attitude toward risks influence SG scores and that this creates a distortion in the measure of utility. The research also sheds the light on the need to gather more information on how people think during such valuation exercises. On the whole, this thesis contributes to enhancing the knowledge of the methods and of their limits. It concludes on the necessity to understand better the intellectual and emotional process that underlie these valuations techniques in order to improve the methods or even to develop new instruments.