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Joan Costa-Font

LSE, UK, and IZA, Germany

This project is important because typically labor market reforms do not consider the knock on effect on sleep time, which provides an important mechanism to explain potential effects of employment on health and well-being

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Professor of Health Economics, London School of Economics (LSE), UK

Research interest

Health economics, economics of aging, behavioral economics, political economy

Website

https://www.lse.ac.uk/business/consulting/experts/joan-costa-font

Past positions

Harkness Fellow, Harvard University, USA (2012–2013); Consultant, The World Bank (2006, 2010); Associate Professor (2015), Reader (2012), Senior Lecturer (tenured - 2010), Lecturer (2007), London School of Economics (LSE), UK

Qualifications

PhD in Economics, University of Barcelona, 2001

Selected publications

  • "Uninsured by choice? Evidence from a choice experiment on long term care insurance." Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organisation 173 (2020): 422–434 (with R. Frank and F. Akaichi).

  • “Do public caregiving subsidies and supports affect the provision of care and transfers?” Journal of Health Economics 84 (2022): 102639 (with C. Vilaplana and S. Jimenez).

  • “Biased survival expectations and behaviours: Does domain specific information matter? Journal of Risk and Uncertainty (2022) (with C. Vilaplana).

  • “Does long-term care subsidisation reduce hospital admissions?” Journal of Health Economics 58:1 (2018): 43–66 (with S. Jimenez-Martin and C. Vilaplana).

  • “Child sleep and maternal labour market outcomes.” Journal of Health Economics 69 (2020) (with S. Fleche).

article(s)

  • How to support adult caregivers?

    Caregiving for older adults is detrimental to caregivers’ well-being and requires policy interventions to support them

    Joan Costa-Font, June 2023
    Some studies estimate that the value of time spent on unpaid caregiving is 2.7% of the GDP of the EU. Such a figure exceeds what EU countries spend on formal long-term care as a share of GDP (1.5%). Adult caregiving can exert significant harmful effects on the well-being of caregivers and can exacerbate the existing gender inequalities in employment. To overcome the detrimental cognitive costs of fulfilling the duty of care to older adults, focus should be placed on the development of support networks, providing caregiving subsidies, and enhancing labor market legislation that brings flexibility and level-up pay.
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  • Incentivizing sleep?

    Insufficient sleep affects employment and productivity

    Joan Costa-Font, November 2022
    Spending time sleeping not only improves individuals’ well-being, but it can influence employment outcomes and productivity. Sleep can be disrupted by company schedules and deadlines, extended working times, and several individual and household decisions. Labor market regulation and corporate strategies should factor in the immediate effect of insufficient sleep on employee fatigue and cognitive performance, and the associated effects on employment disruption and productivity loss. Sleep can be influenced by “sleep friendly” employment regulations, technology nudges, monetary incentives, and subsidies for sleeping.
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