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Jeanrenaud, Claude
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Jeanrenaud, Claude
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Claude.Jeanrenaud@unine.ch
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- PublicationAccès libreThree essays on organizational learning in regard to the development of corporate social responsibility(2016)
; Au cours de ces quelques décennies, les entreprises ont été amenées à respecter et à répondre aux préoccupations environnementales et sociétales de nombreuses parties prenantes. Dans ce contexte, la responsabilité sociétale des entreprises (RSE) est devenue un concept de management incontournable que les entreprises ont dû développer et intégrer dans leurs opérations et stratégies. Toutefois, le développement et la mise en œuvre de la RSE dans les opérations des entreprises restent difficiles, car celle-ci demande de repenser leur différents processus et stratégies, et par conséquent de revoir leur cœur de métier. Pour parvenir à ce niveau de changement, un apprentissage substantiel en termes de RSE est inévitable.
Le rôle crucial de l’apprentissage organisationnel dans le développement et la mise en œuvre des actions et politiques liées à la RSE a fait l’objet d’un grand nombre de recherches académiques. Toutefois, ces études étaient souvent fragmentaires et incomplètes. Par conséquent, un important travail de recherche devrait être encore mené afin de donner une vision complète des liens entre l’apprentissage organisationnel et le développement de la RSE.
Cette thèse de doctorat a pour objectif de répondre à ce défi et d’offrir une vision approfondie des processus d’apprentissage organisationnel qui contribuent au développement de la RSE et soutiennent sa mise en œuvre. De plus, elle offre un aperçu de la manière de développer des partenariats intersectoriels (cross-sector social partnership) efficaces permettant aux entreprises de mieux apprendre à développer la RSE. Plus particulièrement, elle cherche à répondre à trois questions de recherche: (1) Comment l’apprentissage organisationnel et ses processus contribuent-ils à favoriser le développement de la RSE? (2) Comment l’entreprise et ses membres expérimentent et s’engagent dans les processus liés à l’apprentissage qui soutiennent la mise en œuvre de la RSE? Comment les entreprises peuvent-elles maximiser leur potentiel d’aptitude au partenariat pour mener avec succès le développement de la RSE en leur sein?
Cette thèse comprend trois essais et chacun est développé de manière à répondre à une des questions de recherche mentionnées ci-dessus. Par ailleurs, chaque essai a été conçu comme un rapport distinct pouvant se lire indépendamment des deux autres.
Dans le premier essai, je revois de manière critique la littérature existante pour conceptualiser la façon dont la recherche à ce jour a abordé le développement de la RSE en matière d’apprentissage organisationnel. Je fournis ainsi un cadre conceptuel pour caractériser le rôle de l’apprentissage organisationnel dans le développement de la RSE, qui est conçu autour de quatre processus d’apprentissage organisationnel et de trois relations d’apprentissage RSE. En ce qui concerne les relations, nous observons que l’apprentissage peut se produire exclusivement au sein de l’entreprise (c.-à-d. sans les autres) mais aussi par des autres, et avec les autres. Les quatre processus d’apprentissage organisationnel comprennent l’acquisition de la connaissance, sa distribution, son interprétation et son maintien dans la mémoire de l’entreprise. La revue de littérature aide à structurer la littérature à l’intersection de l’apprentissage organisationnel et de la RSE. Des pistes de recherches futures destinées à approfondir notre compréhension des enjeux et processus en lien avec l’apprentissage au sein de la RSE sont proposées.
Le corpus des modèles existants du point de vue des praticiens sur le développement de la RSE omet en partie d’aborder la manière dont les entreprises apprennent à développer la RSE ainsi que de fournir une compréhension du rôle central des processus d’apprentissage dans la construction des initiatives et politiques liées à la RSE. Dans ce second essai, en examinant le développement de la RSE dans quatre multinationales actives dans l’industrie pharmaceutique et chimique, un modèle plus complet est présenté. Extrapolant les données récoltées durant des entretiens approfondis, l’objectif de ce modèle est de rendre compte de la manière dont les entreprises apprennent à développer la RSE et à l’incorporer au sein de leurs stratégies et de leurs activités. Tout d’abord, un ensemble relié de quatre processus de mise en œuvre de la RSE est identifié grâce aux entretiens: « RSE intellection », « RSE edification », « RSE effectuation » et « RSE exploration ». Ce résultat fournit ensuite la base sur lequel un modèle bidimensionnel conceptualisant un cycle d’apprentissage continu pour la mise en œuvre de la RSE est construit. Le modèle bidimensionnel comprend les quatre dimensions susmentionnées qui s’engrènent avec quatre processus entremêlés d’apprentissage: expérimenter activement la RSE (actively experiencing CSR), observer de façon réfléchie (reflectively observing CSR), obtenir de nouvelles connaissances en matière de RSE (gaining new CSR knowledge), et organiser la connaissance existante en matière de RSE (organizing extant CSR knowledge) – complété par une cinquième dimension d’apprentissage transversale, le stockage de la connaissance en matière de RSE (storing CSR knowledge). En résumé, cette étude établit empiriquement la façon dont la mise en œuvre de la RSE et les processus d’apprentissage organisationnel s’imbriquent et conceptualise cette interconnexion à travers un modèle.
Selon beaucoup de spécialistes, les entreprises et leurs membres peuvent développer de manière plus efficace leur RSE en s’engageant activement dans des partenariats intersectoriels avec des parties prenantes. Néanmoins, des études empiriques ont trouvé que les partenariats intersectoriels, en particulier dans le contexte de partenariats entre une organisation à but lucratif et une autre à but non lucratif atteignent seulement des résultats minimaux. Les chercheurs ont lutté pour comprendre les défis entravant leur développement efficace avec un succès mitigé. Par conséquent, dans mon dernier essai, j’introduis un concept tiré des sciences politiques, connu comme étant la notion d’altérité existentielle (existential otherness). Je propose qu’un sentiment d’altérité existentielle peut envahir les partenariats intersectoriels. En d’autres termes, les partenariats sont minés par un sentiment de malaise au point qu’on ne trouve rien de familier dans l’autre personne, que dans son essence, l’autre est un étranger et devrait le rester car d’un point de vue fondamental, les parties ne possèdent rien de significatif en commun. Un tel sentiment désagréable pourrait expliquer – outre les défis identifiés précédemment – pourquoi la collaboration vacille et la difficulté de construire des partenariats intersectoriels réussis. Ensuite, nous avançons et argumentons que pour que les partenaires surmontent ce sentiment d’altérité, une importance particulière devrait être donnée aux interactions informelles (casual interactions, par ex. jouer au poker, au tennis ou encore faire des grillades ensemble), le but étant de construire des liens sociaux solides sans parler des affaires. Les interactions informelles peuvent être cruciales pour vaincre le sens d’altérité, favorisant ainsi les partenariats intersectoriels et renforçant ainsi à leur tour l’apprentissage et le développement de la RSE pour l’entreprise., Over the last few decades, companies have been increasingly expected to respect and respond to a variety of stakeholder concerns regarding environmental and social issues. In this context, corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an indispensable management concept that companies have had to develop and integrate into their operations and strategies. Nevertheless, the development and implementation of CSR within the operations of firms remains difficult as CSR requires firms to rethink their varied processes, strategies, and indeed even their core business. To achieve this level of change, substantial CSR-related learning is inescapable.
The crucial role of organizational learning (OL) in the development and implementation of CSR-related actions and policies has been the subject of numerous academic studies, notwithstanding those studies were often fragmentary and incomplete. Thus, much work still needs to be done to form a more complete picture of how OL and CSR development are related.
This dissertation aims to respond to this challenge and offers insight into the processes of organization learning that contribute to CSR development and support CSR implementation. In addition, it offers insight into how to develop effective cross-sector social partnerships that can better enable companies learn how to develop CSR. Specifically, it seeks to answer three research questions: (1) How does organizational learning and its processes contribute to fostering CSR development? (2) How do companies and their members experience and engage in learning-related processes that support CSR implementation? (3) How can organizations maximize their partnership-fit potential to successfully unfold CSR development within their organizations?
This dissertation contains three essays with each essay developed to answer one of the above mentioned research questions. Furthermore, each essay has been designed as a standalone composition that can be read independently of the other two. In the first essay, I critically review existing literature to conceptualize how research to date has approached CSR development in terms of OL. I provide a framework for characterizing the role of OL in CSR development that is configured around four OL processes and three CSR learning relationships. In regard to relationships, we observe that learning can occur exclusively within the organization (i.e., without others), but also from others, and with others. The four OL processes include the acquisition of knowledge, its distribution, its interpretation and its retention within the memory of the firm. The literature review helps to structure the literature at the intersection of organizational learning and CSR. Avenues for future research aimed at furthering our understanding of key learning-related issues and processes at play in CSR development are provided.
The existing body of practitioner-oriented models on CSR development still partly fails to address the way companies actually learn to develop CSR and provide understanding of the central role of learning processes in the building of CSR-related policies and initiatives. In the second essay, then, by investigating CSR development in four multinational companies active in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, a more comprehensive model is proposed.
Generalizing from data garnered during lengthy interviews, the model’s purpose is to give an account of the way organizations are learning to develop CSR and assimilate it into their strategies and operations. First, a connected set of four processes of CSR implementation are identified from the subject interviews: CSR intellection, CSR edification, CSR effectuation, and CSR exploration. This finding then provides the basis on which a bi-dimensional model conceptualizing a continuous learning cycle for CSR implementation is built. The bi- dimensional model encompasses the above four dimensions meshed with four interlocked learning-related processes--actively experiencing CSR, reflectively observing CSR, gaining new CSR knowledge, and organizing extant CSR knowledge--complemented with a fifth transversal learning dimension, storing CSR knowledge. In sum, this study empirically establishes how CSR implementation with OL processes interlock, and conceptualizes this interconnection through a model.
According to many scholars, organizations and their members can more effectively develop CSR when actively engaged in cross-sector partnerships with stakeholders. However, empirical investigations have found that some cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs), particularly for-profit/non-profit partnerships, typically attain only minimum outcomes. Scholars have struggled to understand the challenges impeding their effective development with limited success. Therefore, in my final essay I introduce from political science a concept known as “existential otherness”. I propose that a sense of existential otherness may pervade CSSPs. In other words, the partnership is subverted by an uncomfortable sense that one can find nothing familiar in the other person, that at their essence the other is a stranger and must remain so, because at some fundamental level one holds nothing of significance in common with them. Such a disagreeable feeling would explain--in addition to already identified challenges—why collaboration falters and successful CSSPs are so difficult to build. We then argue that for partners to overcome the sense of otherness, emphasis should be given to casual interactions (e.g., playing poker, playing tennis, or barbecuing together) with the aim being to build strong social ties without talking about business. Casual interactions, therefore, may be pivotal to overcoming the sense of otherness, thus promoting CSSPs, and in turn enhancing CSR learning and development for organizations. - PublicationMétadonnées seulementFormula for revenue equalization with progressive redistribution rates(2015-3-1)
; ; Revenue equalization consists of reducing disparity in taxing power between cantons or municipalities (hereafter administrative divisions) within cantons, transferring fiscal revenue from strong taxing power administrative divisions to weak taxing power administrative divisions. A method for revenue equalization leads a constant redistribution if the transferred amounts are computed independently from the taxing power of administrative divisions. By contrast, a method for revenue equalization leads a progressive redistribution if it takes the taxing power into account in the transferred amounts computation. Hence, the amounts transferred are negligible for administrative divisions with a taxing power close to the mean taxing power and these amounts increase as the taxing power of administrative divisions moves away from the mean taxing power. A formula for revenue equalization is proposed. This formula induces a progressive redistribution and makes it possible for the user to control the strength of the progressiveness. A method based on the Gini index is proposed in order to optimally tune the redistribution rates under some constraints. - PublicationAccès libreThree essays on supply and demand in the Swiss health care system(2015)
- PublicationMétadonnées seulementFormule pour la péréquation des ressources avec facteur de progressivitéL'une des deux composantes de la péréquation financière, la péréquation des ressources, a pour objectif de réduire les disparités de ressources fiscales entres les communes. Les communes financièrement fortes alimentent de leur contribution le fonds de péréquation, alors que les communes faibles bénéficient de transferts du fonds. Le montant total versé au fonds par les communes fortes est identique au montant total des transferts alloués aux communes faibles. Deux modes de redistribution sont possibles: redistribution proportionnelle ou progressive. Dans le premier cas, les communes riches versent au fonds un pourcentage fixe (33% dans le projet) de l'écart total des ressources fiscales. Quant aux communes faibles, elles reçoivent un transfert équivalent à un pourcentage fixe (33%) de l'écart total des ressources fiscales. La présente étude propose une formule qui permet de redistribuer les ressources fiscales d'une manière progressive tout en garantissant l'équilibre des versements et des prélèvements au fonds. La part des ressources fiscales que les communes fortes abandonnent au fonds représente une part croissante de l'écart total des ressources. Cette part est inférieure à 33% pour les communes dont l'indice ne dépasse que modérément la moyenne, supérieure à 33% pour les communes les plus riches. A l'opposé, pour les communes faibles, la réduction relative de l'écart de ressources est plus élevée pour les communes très faibles que pour celles dont l'indice de ressources est proche de la moyenne. Ainsi, le transfert de fonds destiné aux communes les plus faibles excède 33% de l'écart total des ressources, celui destiné aux communes proches de la moyenne est inférieur à 33% de ce même écart. Les versements et les prélèvements au fonds s'équilibrent.
- PublicationAccès libreThree essays on cantonal variations in the utilization and costs of healthcare services in Switzerland(2013)
Part I of the document continues with an overview on Switzerland’s health data situation and reveals that its most critical weaknesses exist in the areas of outpatient healthcare provision and of epidemiology. Part I terminates with a presentation of the literature overviewing international and national differences in regional healthcare costs. The review concludes that it is challenging for health economics to provide consistent answers to many of the important research questions pertaining to the field of regional healthcare cost and utilization differences. The most frequently cited causes of this difficulty are the complexity of the healthcare systems and the crucial dearth of broadly recognized theoretical models and available data. A recently presented model (Chandra and Skinner 2012; Skinner 2012) was considered to be a good starting point for a more systematic analysis of geographic variations in healthcare costs and utilization.
One agreement in the literature about the methodological findings is obvious: when explaining regional health differences, it is advantageous to account for levels of and trends in healthcare costs (or utilization) simultaneously. However, one has to be aware that different sets of variables can influence each dimension. Thus, by being able to combine cross-section and time-series analyses, a panel econometric approach seems to be the most promising statistical-technical instrument for tackling these types of research questions.
Moreover, because the prices paid in the health sector (e.g., the cantonal taxpoint values in Switzerland), the volumes of care (e.g., the number of per capita GP consultations), and the medical practices applied (e.g., the average number of taxpoints used per consultation) can—again—be influenced by different sets of factors, separate analyses of these three main components of healthcare costs is preferable. Moreover, the literature review identifies individual data (i.e., the individual patient, the individual insurance policyholder, or the individual healthcare provider) and geo-coded information 1 as the statistical and geographical level that offers the most possibilities for such research. Unfortunately, the Swiss health data normally do not allow in-depth analysis on such individual levels.
In Part II of the document, three essays containing concrete analyses of regional differences in costs and in actual and future utilization of healthcare services in Switzerland are presented; none of these empirical investigations goes beyond the cantonal level. The first essay investigates the factors associated with cantonal differences in the utilization of mandatory health insurance (MHI) services between 2000 and 2007 by applying panel econometric (fixed effects) models. For variations in utilization for each of the six largest MHI service provider domains—viz., general practitioners, medical specialists, hospital inpatient care, hospital outpatient care, medication and nursing homes—significant factors that are correlated with utilization frequency over time and across cantons can be identified.
In particular, a greater density of service providers tends to be significantly associated with the per-capita consumption of healthcare services. On the demand side, older, more urban and wealthier populations with more deprivation problems summarize the principal positively correlated factors. Financing characteristics in the form of high deductibles or managed care instruments can also play a role in the utilization level of healthcare services, although some large difficulties 2 were faced in confirming their effects empirically. Finally, the general time trends describing the accelerating utilization of outpatient drugs, nursing homes and outpatient hospitals are presented in contrast to the declining trends observed for inpatient hospitals, GPs, and specialist services in private practices.
The main contribution of the first essay of the thesis is its being the first such work to analyze spatial and temporal differences in quantities instead of costs of healthcare service domains in Switzerland. Moreover, the testing of a constant set of 12 explanatory variables across the six healthcare service domains allows a bi-directional interpretation of the results. In addition to understanding how each of the six target variables is interrelated with the whole set of regressors, one can learn more about how each purportedly influential factor is individually associated with all six healthcare service domains.
The second essay in Part II begins by presenting the large differences in average annual per-bed costs between individual nursing homes and between nursing homes grouped by cantons. The paper tries to identify empirically some explanations for these sizable per-bed cost variations. At the same time, the assumed existence of two-levels of explanatory factors (viz., individual and cantonal levels) is taken into consideration by modeling them with regression estimations in multilevel form. Moreover, besides the variation of total costs per bed and per year, the variations of the annual per-bed costs of accommodation and assistance and the annual per-bed costs covered by the MHI are calculated separately.
Because the data from 2006 alone were available for the research presented in the second essay at the time of its conception, it was decided to approach this study with only a single year being analyzed in a cross-level setting. This approach clearly has its limitations, but it did not preclude employing more sophisticated panel data approaches at a later date. Such a limited model explains variations in the annual per-bed costs between cantons fairly well, but quite a share of variation within cantons remains unexplained. Because no ideal indicator was available for the data on the hotel service standards of Swiss nursing homes, this result was not surprising—especially regarding annual per-bed costs of accommodation and assistance. However, the operationalized variables—such as the number of days invoiced per bed and year (i.e., occupancy rate), the intensity of nursing time spent per patient and day, the qualification level of the personnel, the relative number of non-medical employees, and the cantonal wage index—were significantly correlated with all three cost indicators.
The essay admits to the difficulty faced in deriving recommendations for policy-making authorities from these results. Cantons should at least monitor their nursing home costs and financing continuously—in particular, their costs for assistance and accommodation. Should increasingly large numbers of individuals and their families out of the growing number of people with chronic illnesses be unable to pay these costs out of their own pockets in the coming years, the cantons might be forced to intervene.
The third essay of Part II analyzes regional differences in the utilization of somatic acute care beds in Swiss hospitals. A description of cantonal population age structures and trends and hospital utilization patterns in 2010 is followed by calculations of ranges of cantonal acute care hospital volumes through 2030. Originally developed by researchers at the Swiss Health Observatory and the Statistical Office of Canton Vaud (VD) for the statistical support of hospital planning processes in individual cantons, a projection model is applied for the first time in this study for all 26 cantons simultaneously and allows a direct comparison of the results across cantons and with the country as a whole as well as calculations of national-level results for medical branches. The projection model realizes a systematic link between Swiss medical statistics for hospitals and official cantonal population scenarios. Various hypotheses on future length-of-stay (LOS) trends in Swiss acute care hospitals are simulated with the model.
The most important results of the study are the following: the national number of hospital days required through 2030 should increase no more (or only slightly more) than the population increases. While an increase of hospital days between 5 percent and 13 percent is expected in the two “middle” scenarios of the model, the population will grow 11 percent between 2010 and 2030 in the official “average” demographic scenario. This rather positive outcome on the national level is the result of major differences between cantons. Some cantons will have to deal with increases of hospital days of approximately 30 percent, whereas in other cantons hospital days will rise less than 5 percent. Moreover, treatments typical for older patients, such as cardiology and vascular medicine treatments, will clearly be more necessary in 2030 than medical branches with very young patients, such as neonatology or obstetrics.
Part III provides some specific conclusions for the Swiss healthcare system with its characteristics of regulated competition and strong federalist structure. As a strategy of analyzing and comparing healthcare cost components defined as being low aggregated (e.g., individual health service domains or providers and individual cost components, such as quantities and prices) is favored and targeted in the three empirical essays of Part II, it seems important that such detailed analyses should afterwards be complemented by an attempt to draw an overall picture of the results. Accordingly, an applied synthesis of the results for two exemplary cantons—one canton with low (Obwalden OW) and one canton with high per capita healthcare costs (Geneva GE)—is presented in the Excursus of Part III.
Without yet having executed the necessary empirical work, proposals are made in the Excursus about how cantons might be distinguished by some of their characteristics on the demand and supply sides of the healthcare system. On the demand side, cantons may have a more “integrated” or a more “globalized” population. Concrete characteristics that assign a cantonal population to one or the other type could be derived from their different economic conditions (e.g., income, assets, and their distributions), the importance of social-economic exclusion (e.g., unemployment, receipt of benefits), the average physical and mental health status, and the actual and future age structure (including future requirements of health care).
On the supply side, two different types of cantons are proposed as well. First, there might be the “peripheral-type scheme” of a cantonal health provision system. Such a health system is focused on primary care and nursing homes, and it is characterized by a modest health provision infrastructure with only a few active specialists, with many health services being purchased in other cantons. Second, the “center-type scheme” of a cantonal health provision system is proposed. Such a system is characterized by a large (university or principal) hospital that is surrounded by many independent specialists and pharmacies. This system, in contrast, attracts patients from other cantons.
The document concludes by offering a few suggestions for future research. Rather concrete propositions were made in the three empirical articles of the thesis. First, they were mainly about more sophisticated methodological approaches: the use of instrumental variables and two-stages least squares estimations in the first article, the use of panel data models with additional regressors in the second article, and the integration of additional variables such as sex, morbidity trends, and future changes of regional patient flows in the third article. Second, extensions concerning the data were required: the necessity of always working with statistical data on an aggregated level might be the most significant problem this thesis faces throughout. Moreover, more detailed domains of health service providers could be analyzed in the first article, a search for better variables concerning hospitality standards and cantonal regulations in nursing homes is proposed in the second article, and a more precise analysis of hospital cases with very long LOSs would be useful in the third article. As a more general recommendation, more research about possible trends in the future health status of aging populations in Western societies was proposed. Special models to simulate such quantitative calculations exist and could be translated to the case presented by Switzerland. .
1 Of course, in reality, the exact research question actually determines whether individual-level data are needed; however, most of the time, data aggregation (if needed) is possible, but desaggregation is not.
2 The main methodological challenges were endogeneity problems (omitted variables and variable selection biases) and ecological fallacies (see Chapter 4). - PublicationMétadonnées seulement
- 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 libreThree essays on the economics of smoking(2011)
This dissertation focuses on the influence of tobacco policies on smoking behavior, on the perception of smoking risks of young individuals, and on the valuation of smoking cessation treatments. It is divided into two main parts. In the first part, I discuss the rationale of analyzing smoking decisions from an economic perspective, based on the specificities of the product. I then briefly present the main models of smoking decisions, and I review the recent literature on the “best-practice” interventions aimed at reducing tobacco use, i.e., price increases, information, advertising bans, smoking bans, and cessation support. The second part consists of three empirical essays related to smoking decisions. The first essay sheds light on the ability of tobacco control expenditures to influence individual smoking decisions. In 2007, in Switzerland, approximately 20 million francs, or 2.6 francs per capita, were spent on non-price policy interventions aimed at reducing tobacco use in the population. While I provide evidence that these resources were effective in increasing the number of quitters, it seems likely that they did not have any significant influence on smoking onset. Besides price increases, tobacco control measures implemented in the last decade hardly influenced smoking participation among youths. Another strategy that could potentially influence the behavior of this population is the dissemination of proper deterrent messages. The second essay specifically looks at the relative importance that young individuals put on the consequences of smoking. I show that apart from lung cancer, reduced life expectancy, and cardiovascular diseases, youths are also concerned by more immediate consequences, such as a reduction of physical capacity and sexual dysfunction. I also show that smoking participation is negatively associated with the level of far-sightedness, defined as the level of concern for long-term health risks. The last essay focuses on smoking cessation. Smokers make repeated attempts to quit and are rarely successful, mainly due to the negative effects of addiction, i.e., physical and psychological craving. One way to improve the cessation rates is to increase the use in the population of an appropriate smoking cessation support. To understand what drives the demand for smoking cessation drugs and how smokers value their potential benefits and disadvantages, I collected data on hypothetical choices and focused on treatment efficacy, minor side effects, price, availability, and ability to prevent smoking-cessation-associated weight intake. I was able to estimate willingness-to-pay for each dimension and for improved medications as a whole and also to point out some individual characteristics that determine the decisions to use such products. - PublicationAccès libreDie Schuldenbremse des Bundes: Hintergründe und Wirkung(2011)