John E. Murray. Origins of American Health Insurance: A History of Industrial Sickness Funds

John E. Murray's Origins of American Health Insurance concernsa little-known precursor to commercial health insurance, the"industrial sickness funds" of the book's subtitle. This well-researchedbook makes a compelling case for the importance of these fundsin shaping the American health insurance system as we know it.Murray argues that the success of sickness funds during theearly twentieth century helps to explain why European-styleuniversal health insurance does not exist in the United States. In 1915, industrial sickness funds     

Out of Welfare: Functioning of Income Support in Torino

This paper explores the opportunities provided by a file of longitudinal data regarding income support benefits for able bodied poor in order to understand the functioning of the local social assistance system in Torino. The features of this system, its selective-categorized character and the differences from universalistic systems are analyzed. In this framework, the duration of the periods users receive benefits has been studied by means of event history analysis. The probability of exit from welfare is related to socio-demographic characteristics of recipients. In particular we observe a lower propensity to exit for female headed households and households with children. The probability of exit appears to be affected also by labour market conditions, being higher when these are more favourable. The exit rate does not decrease as time elapsed in welfare moves on. We observe the existence of different styles of assistance among the different social services within the city. Difficulties related to the interpretation of the empirical results, given the selective-categorized features of the social assistance system, are emphasized. Finally, we discuss some theoretical issues about evaluation of income support policies.All the sections of this paper are the result of the cooperation of the authors. Nicola Negri has coordinated the various steps of the work and has written Section 5 with Contini. Nicoletta Bosco has mainly worked with Nicola Negri to prepare the data archive and has written Sections 2 and 3. Dalit Contini has discussed with Negri and Bosco the model of empirical analysis and has implemented it; she has written Sections 4 and 6. All authors share Section 1 and 7.     

Robin Pearson. Insuring the Industrial Revolution: Fire Insurance in Great Britain, 1700-1850. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2004. xiii + 434 pp. ISBN 0-7546-336302, $99.95 (cloth).

Robin Pearson’s Insuring the Industrial Revolution providesa richly detailed account of the British fire insurance industrythrough the mid-nineteenth century. Whereas most previous accountshave focused on single companies, Pearson’s study encompassesthe entire industry of London and provincial firms and seeksto place the industry within the larger context of British economichistory. British economic historians have long overlooked the contributionof insurance, and service industries in general, to the nation’seconomic     

Inequality of opportunity in secondary school enrolment in Italy,Germany and the Netherlands

Aim of this work is to evaluate the overall effect of social origins on secondary school track enrolment in Italy, Germany and Netherlands, allowing for consistent cross country comparisons. Track choices are assumed to depend on student’s ability and social origins; since proficiency before tracking is not observed, ability is not kept under control. Nonetheless, the unconditional social background effect is the quantity of main substantive interest because it represents the total effect of social origins on school choices. Yet, since regression coefficients in logit models are biased even with independent unobserved heterogeneity, comparison across countries are difficult; the average sample derivative of the response probability is employed and it is showed to be a valid alternative measure of the total social origins effect. The following issue is also addressed: social origins inequality in secondary school choices may be affected by access restrictions policies, at work in some countries, where enrolment into the academic track is subject to binding school recommendations or ability tests. First, we propose a simple theoretical model and derive that the policy is expected to lower the effect of social origins conditional on ability, although the impact on the total effect can either decrease or increase. Second, by exploiting the institutional differences across German Länder with respect to enrolment policies, we carry out a preliminary empirical analysis within Germany. The main empirical findings are: (i) the total effect of social origins on track choice is weaker in the Netherlands and stronger in Germany, with Italy in between; (ii) within Germany, access restriction seem to weaken the parental background effect.