Fundación Mapfre provides funding for two research projects on the insurance sector

Two projects led by researchers at the UB School of Economics have been awarded funding by the grant programme fostered by Fundación Mapfre. François Cohen will carry out a project to evaluate the impact of universal health care in Mexico. On the other hand, David Moriña will conduct research that will focus on analysing  the impact of the pandemic on health insurance claims.

This year, Fundación Mapfre has selected 5 projects from close to 300 proposals from 21 countries, and will distribute €75,000 among five researchers to promote knowledge about the insurance sector and encourage interest in social protection areas such as the economics of aging.

François Cohen is guest professor of the Department of Economics at the Universitat de Barcelona and researcher of the Barcelona Institute of Economics (IEB) which is under the frame of the Chair of Energy Sustainability – UB. He is also a honorary research fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment (University of Oxford). His research relates to climate change adaptation and mitigation in several sectors, especially energy and health. He also contributed to several policy reports for the European Commission, the UNDP, the Green Economy Coalition and the French and UK ministries of environment.

François’ project deals with understanding some of the impacts of access to universal healthcare based on the Mexican experience. It uses a state-of-the-art statistical approach to estimate health impacts and extend the impact assessment to non-health outcomes. For instance, the impact that a better access to healthcare could have on social cohesion.

David Moriña is postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Econometrics at the Universitat de Barcelona and researcher at the Centre de Recerca Matemàtica (CRM). His research interests lie in mathematical modeling for epidemiology and public health, with particular focus on health economics. He has led research projects funded by Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, Fundación Santander or the Spanish Ministry of Health, contributing to the Spanish vaccination strategy against Covid-19 as a member of the Mathematical Modelling Workgroup.

David’s project focuses on the development of new data science techniques capable of estimating the decrease in the usage of health insurance services due to the Covid-19 pandemic and related to mobility restrictions in 2020 It includes an overview of the expected impact in the future, mainly because of delayed visits and diagnoses or Covid-19 side effects.

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