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Routine data are needed to monitor ethnic health inequalities. The proportion of hospital discharge records with ethnicity information has been improving in Scotland. The aim of this paper is to assess whether routine data can provide valid comparisons of admission rates by ethnic group.

Routine hospital admissions data in four NHS Boards were analysed by ethnic group and sex to compare incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and coronary heart disease (CHD). A previous study linking health and census ethnicity information for 2001‐2003 provided the comparison standard.

There was a similar risk of AMI for South Asian compared to non‐South Asian people in 2009‐2011 and 2001‐2003. South Asian people and Pakistani women had higher risk of CHD than White Scottish people. The Other White group had higher and the White Irish lower risk of AMI admission in comparison to 2001‐2003 data.

The comparison used a different age range, did not include community deaths, covered a part of Scotland rather than the whole, and may have been affected by changes to denominators, which were based on the UK census 2001.

The similar IRRs for AMI from census linkage in 2001‐2003 and NHS data from 2009‐2011 suggest routine ethnicity data are valid in some NHS Boards. Analyses can reveal previously unknown variations to justify health improvement action. To maximise the precision of analyses, data completeness needs to be increased and sustained.

Laboratory studies of social interaction have revealed a wide range of phenomena that are difficult to explain using standard economic models. For example, people will often sacrifice their own earnings in order to be generous, cooperative, punitive, and retributive in interactions with anonymous strangers. “Behavioral” models that redefine agents’ preferences attempt to provide an account of these phenomena as reflecting a “taste for fairness” or altruism, aversion to inequality, concern about others’ beliefs, and so on. Such models either fail to account for the rich sensitivity of actions to context or in allowing for rich context-dependence, these models ultimately substitute description for explanation. Hayek’s work provides a foundation for thinking about how to explain these phenomena, by conceiving of people as both purpose-seeking (as in economic models) and rule-following. Decisions are shaped both by material interests and by a normative framework that is evoked by context and helps people decide what one ought to do in a particular situation. The implication of this approach is that rather than trying to understand heterogeneity across individuals in terms of preferences, experimenters should instead try to understand heterogeneity across contexts in terms of the rules and norms that operate in the background and guide or constrain people’s purpose-seeking tendencies. What economics needs, then, is a theory of how and why these rules and norms vary with context as they do.

We empirically analyze the link between state capacity and civil conflict via the manufacturing sector, which is the source of wealth for an emerging new elite interested in obtaining political representation, and is the outcome of a new political equilibrium more in tune with capital accumulation. This raises the cost of civil conflict, reducing its probability of occurrence. We find evidence in favor of our hypothesis in panels of African and Latin American countries.

Culture is a central concept broadly studied in social anthropology and sociology. It has been gaining increasing attention in economics, appearing in research on labor market discrimination, identity, gender, and social preferences. Most experimental economics research on culture studies cross-national or cross-ethnic differences in economic behavior. In contrast, we explain laboratory behavior using two cultural dimensions adopted from a prominent general cultural framework in contemporary social anthropology: group commitment and grid control. Groupness measures the extent to which individual identity is incorporated into group or collective identity; gridness measures the extent to which social and political prescriptions intrinsically influence individual behavior. Grid-group characteristics are measured for each individual using selected items from the World Values Survey. We hypothesize that these attributes allow us to systematically predict behavior in a way that discriminates among multiple forms of social preferences using a simple, parsimonious deductive model. The theoretical predictions are further tested in the economics laboratory by applying them to the dictator, ultimatum, and trust games. We find that these predictions are confirmed overall for most experimental games, although the strength of empirical support varies across games. We conclude that grid-group cultural theory is a viable predictor of people’s economic behavior, then discuss potential limitations of the current approach and ways to improve it.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge healthcare systems worldwide. The authors examined the lived experiences and perceptions of healthcare workers (HCWs) in managerial and senior positions to explore the pandemic's effects on well-being and valued organisational responses.

Using purposive sampling, the authors conducted 39 semi-structured interviews with senior staff including health service administrators, heads of department and senior clinicians at a designated COVID-19 facility in New South Wales, Australia. Interviews were conducted from November 2020 to February 2021 to reflect on experiences during the height of the pandemic in 2020 (mid-March to the end of May 2020).

Workplace experiences affecting HCWs' well-being included being shunned by others, fear of infecting family, fear of the unknown, concerns about personal protective equipment, lack of direction from above and increased workload. Organisational interventions to protect the health and safety of HCWs and their patients included redeployment, improved communication, effective management committees, education and mental health supports.

Organisations can minimise worker-identified factors threatening their well-being during a health crisis by applying broad-ranging initiatives including inclusive and open communication, promoting flexible work practices, providing up-to-date guidelines and policies and fostering camaraderie between workers.

The voices of senior clinical and managerial staff have been largely unheard during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors addressed this deficit by describing their experiences and insights regarding the pandemic's impact on well-being and the organisation's responses to simultaneously safeguarding its staff and providing quality patient care.

Cancer discussion is perceived as a taboo subject among different cultures and societies including Africans. This perception has caused limited knowledge about the disease and prevented some from seeking early diagnosis and treatment. With West Africans now living in western societies where cancer is openly discussed, this study aims to explore how black Africans perceive the disease and the implications for healthcare.

Five focus groups of 53 persons from Ghanaian and Nigerian migrant communities in Luton participated in this study.

Perceptions of fear, shame and denial were identified as key elements of how people perceive and react to cancer among the study population.

Secrecy and apprehension were identified as major barriers and have prevented some from adequately accessing and utilizing cancer facilities in the country. The feelings of fear, secrecy and stigma associated with the disease across different ethnic groups, cultures and nations also exist among the study population. These outcomes are similar and chime with published findings of limited cancer perception research among other ethnic groups and races here in the UK and across the globe.

Negotiations are often conducted under stress. Previous studies show that stress can help or hurt negotiation outcomes. This study suggests that individual differences explain these effects, and the purpose of this study is to examine the effect of social value orientation (SVO) and stress on negotiation outcomes.

Two experimental studies and a pilot investigate the influence of stress and SVO (prosocial vs proself) on negotiation offers and outcomes. The authors’ studies are grounded on social interdependence theory and arousal literatures to explain the effects of stress on negotiation.

Stress has a positive influence on integrative offers (S1) and joint outcomes (S2). SVO moderates the effect of stress on joint negotiation outcomes (S2), such that, under stress, prosocials fare better than proselfs.

Managers negotiating under stress should pay attention to their own as well as the others’ SVOs. Managers could also build their negotiation teams considering this individual difference and favor the presence of prosocials in stressful negotiations.

The findings have practical implications for managers who are under stress on a daily basis.

This research contributes to managers that need to understand how to reach integrative agreements under stress. This is especially important when negotiators are representatives of employees or companies, as the outcomes can affect many individuals.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study examining the relationship between stress, SVO and negotiation offers and outcomes.

This paper aims to review the effectiveness of a Smoke‐free Homes Project in a deprived area, Salford, in the UK. The project aimed to reduce exposure to secondhand smoke within the home, chiefly amongst households with resident smokers.

Local people from ten deprived communities were recruited as Smoke‐free Advisors, raising awareness of the dangers of secondhand smoke and “rewarding” participants for making one of three smoke‐free promises, ranging from keeping their home smoke‐free (gold promise) to not smoking around children.

In nine months, the project more than doubled its original target of 1,440 smoke‐free households, achieving 3,261 smoke‐free promises. Three‐quarters of these were the full, “gold” promise. At follow up, 98 per cent claimed they had kept to their promise, with 72 per cent describing this as “fairly easy” or “very easy”. Most common reasons given for signing up were children's health or meeting a Smoke‐free Advisor. The target for 50 per cent of promises to come from households with at least one smoker was narrowly missed: 47 per cent was achieved. Although not directly targeting cessation, 81 per cent of smokers reported changes to their smoking habit: one‐quarter quitting, 14 per cent trying unsuccessfully, and 42 per cent cutting down.

Smoke‐free Homes Projects have much to contribute in terms of denormalising smoking in deprived areas.

Despite their popularity, Smoke‐free Homes Projects have rarely been evaluated for effectiveness. This project demonstrated that a three‐stage model using local people can reduce exposure to secondhand smoke, alongside smoking itself, in areas where smoking is often seen as “the norm”.

This study examines the determinants of enforced tax compliance behavior of Malaysian citizens where trust in tax authorities is assumed to be a mediator. Quota sampling method was used to select a sample of 340 participants to participate in a survey. A two-step structural equation modeling (SEM) process was adopted to test a framework comprising 13 hypotheses. Model fit was initially measured using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) while model specification was applied in the second stage to test the structural relationship. The mediating effects of trust in tax authorities were tested via Baron and Kenny (1986) approach, bootstrapping, and AMOS AxB estimand. The findings confirmed that trust in government, trust in tax administrator, power of Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia, and awareness influence enforced compliance. However, tax morale and tax amoral behaviors do not influence enforced compliance. The findings suggest that citizens would fulfill their tax responsibilities if they believe that tax authorities are effective in tax administration. Trust in government fosters trust in the tax authorities. This study contributes to existing literature by confirming the factors that affect enforced tax compliance.

I propose a model of behavior in social interactions where individuals maximize a three-term utility function: a conventional consumption utility term and two “social” terms that capture social preference. One social term is a taste for desert, which is maximized when the individual believes the other person is getting what they deserve. The second social term measures the target individuals’ anger or gratitude from the interaction which is determined by a value function derived from prospect theory. After introducing the model and generating a series of comparative statics results and derived predictions, I report the results of a series of quasi-field experiments on social preferences. I discuss how the model explains several paradoxes of empirical moral philosophy that are less explicable by current economic models of social preference focusing on outcomes and intentions.