As part of the Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar series, the International Economics Department at the Geneva Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Rui Esteves.

He will present his work titled Do Pandemics Change Healthcare? Evidence from the Great Influenza, joint with Kris James Mitchener, Peter Nencka and Melissa A. Thomasson

Abstract: Using newly digitized U.S. city-level data on hospitals, we explore how pandemics alter preferences for healthcare. We find that cities with higher levels of mortality during the Great Influenza of 1918-1919 subsequently expanded hospital capacity by more than cities experiencing less influenza mortality: cities in the top half of the mortality distribution increased their count of hospitals by 8-10 percent in the years after the pandemic. This effect persisted to 1960 and was driven by increases in non-governmental hospitals. Growth responded most in richer cities, exacerbating existing inequalities in access to healthcare. We do not find evidence that government-run hospitals or other types of city-level spending related to healthcare responded to pandemic intensity, suggesting that large health shocks do not necessarily lead to increased public provision of health services.

For those interested, the full paper is available here.

About the speaker

Faculty member since 2018, Rui Esteves previously held academic positions at the University of Oxford and Simon Fraser University. He is specialised in monetary and financial history, straddling the fields of international finance, institutional economics and public finance. His research provides perspective on the globalisation of finance, financial crises, sovereign debt, financial market architecture, the choice of exchange rate regimes and emigrant remittances, as well as rent-seeking and corruption in public office.