Tanguy Le Fur

Internal seminars
phd seminar

Tanguy Le Fur

AMSE
The political economy of public health and the direction of technical change
Venue

IBD Salle 16

Îlot Bernard du Bois - Salle 16

AMU - AMSE
5-9 boulevard Maurice Bourdet
13001 Marseille

Date(s)
Tuesday, March 19 2019| 12:30pm to 1:15pm
Contact(s)

Océane Piétri: oceane.pietri[at]univ-amu.fr
Morgan Raux: morgan.raux[at]univ-amu.fr
Laura Sénécal: laura.senecal[at]univ-amu.fr

Abstract

During the first half of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was marked by an episode of both deterioration of population health and « deskilling » — loss of workers’ skills due to unskillbiased technical change. In this paper, I study the provision of public health over the course of development and its interaction with the direction of technological progress. I show that, when taxes to fund public health investments are chosen so as to maximize output, technological progress is first unskill-biased, the share of unskilled workers increases and as a result, population health deteriorates in the first stage of development. The economy may switch to a regime with positive health investments that provides incentives for workers to accumulate human capital and eventually change the direction of technical progress, or get stuck in a poor health—low skill steady state in the long run.