BACKGROUND According to the social ecological model of health-related behaviors, it is now well accepted that environmental factors influence habitual physical activity. Most previous studies on physical activity determinants have assumed spatial homogeneity across the study area, i.e. that the association between the environment and physical activity is the same whatever the location. The main...

The term governance is used more and more often in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of public policies. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to shed light on its meaning, and to study its applicability for the study of recent public health policies in Latin America. After discussing the differences between governance and the close concepts of management, governability and govern...

The motherhood wage penalty is today probably the largest obstacle to progress in gender equality at work. Using matched employer-employee data from Norway (1980–97), a country with public policies that promote combining family and career, we investigate (a) whether the penalty arises from differential pay by employers or from sorting of employees on occupations and establishments, and (b) chan...

This article serves as an introduction to the others published in this thematic issue of the Cadernos de Saúde Pública. The author makes a brief historical review of the concepts, approaches and methodologies used to study the relationships between social determinants and health outcomes. By analyzing the current global movement around social determinants of health he emphasizes that the distin...

This article reviews fundamental economic concepts of enforcing environmental policies. It describes the basic economic theory of compliance with environmental regulations and reviews empirical tests of hypotheses that the theory produces. It also presents some conceptual notions about the efficient design of enforcement strategies. The article deals with enforcement of traditional command-and-...

Two recent evaluation studies undertaken for the European Commission, related to the LEADER Community Initiative implemented throughout the 1990s, have provided the basis for the issues discussed in this article. This programme was set up to encourage pilot experiences in the promotion of rural development in the problem areas of Europe, by introducing a set of distinctive features emphasizing ...

BACKGROUND Prospective health impact assessment is a new approach to predicting potential health impacts of policies, programmes or projects. It has been widely recognized that public policies have important impacts on health. In 1997, the Liverpool Public Health Observatory was commissioned to carry out a health impact assessment of the Merseyside Integrated Transport Strategy (MerITS). A seco...

I consider the interaction of trade and environmental policies in two canonical models: competitive general equilibrium (which I extend to allow for monopoly power in trade) and multi-period oligopoly (which I extend to incorporate a general pollution abatement technology). Despite the complexities of the models and the considerable differences between them, they have surprisingly similar impli...