Although questions about social cohesion lie at the core of our discipline, definitions are often vague and difficult to operationalize. Here research on social cohesion and social embeddedness is linked by developing a concept of structural cohesion based on network node connectivity. Structural cohesion is defined as the minimum number of actors who, if removed from a group, would disconnect ...

A very troubling issue for health care systems today is that of life-sustaining treatment for patients who have permanently lost their cognitive capacities. These include patients in persistent vegetative state (PVS), or minimally conscious state (MCS), as well as a growing population of patients at the very end stage of dementia. These patients are totally dependent on life-sustaining treatmen...

Sovereign risk premia reflect investors’ beliefs for the equilibrium and off -equilibrium actions of international agents. This paper investigates the international dimension of self-fulfilling sovereign debt crises and characterizes self-interested bailouts (solidarity) and contagion. A credible bailout guarantee by a partner country or international agency can lower a debtor country’s borrowi...

It is well-known that pension fund participants can benefit from intergenerational risksharing, but that different generations have different incentives. This paper models intergenerational solidarity in closing funded pension plans as a bargaining process between generations. We consider generations which each are represented by members of the pension fund’s board. We model pension funds that ...