Dr. Okunade presided at The American Economic Association annual meeting

For release:  April 13, 2016

Dr. Albert Okunade, professor of Economics, recently presided at a highly attended session on "Economic Cycles and the Health of Nations" at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Economic Association (AEA) in San Francisco, CA. The International Health Economics Association and the AEA jointly sponsored this session.

The impetus for this timely research session arose from the increasingly intriguing research question of the nature (pro-cyclically or counter-cyclically) and mechanisms through which, human health conditions change during economic cycles. Theoretical propositions and empirical predictions tend to depend on the particular measure(s) of population health status, data aggregation level, location and the business cycle phase(s) of the study data. What happened (or is still happening) to human health in various countries of the world during the latest global recession has policy implications for industrial and macroeconomic policy interventions. The papers in this session, based on macro- and micro- economic models, offer new and timely insights on policy interventions that could reduce mortality and morbidity in periods of economic slump or prosperity (depending on whether the findings are pro-cyclical or counter-cyclical).