Higher-order risk attitudes include risk aversion, prudence, and temperance. This paper analyzes the effects of such preferences on medical test and treatment decisions, represented either by test and treatment thresholds or – if the test characteristics are endogenous – by the optimal...

Studies on the effect of ageing on health care expenditures (HCE) have revealed the importance of controlling for time-to-death (TTD). These studies, however, are subject to possible endogeneity if HCE influences remaining life expectancy.This paper introduces a ten year observational period on...

The inefficiency of health care provision presents a major health policy concern in Germany. In order to address the issue of efficiency comprehensively – i.e. at the level of the entire system of health care provision rather than individual service providers – empirical analyses are often...

The US and the EU recently introduced regulation to curb the extent of risky off-label drug use. It offers manufacturers a prolongation of patent protection or exclusivity if they invest in pediatric clinical tests. This paper shows that a reinforcement of physician liability for off-label use...

This paper contributes to the analysis of policy measures that attempt to reduce health care expenditures of insurers. We examine the impact of a cash bonus program for preventive health behavior of a German health insurer on prevention effort and health care expenditures using a unique...

Remuneration rates of German nursing homes are prospectively negotiated between long-term care insurance (LTCI) and social assistance on the one side and nursing homes on the other. They diff er considerably across regions while there is no evidence for substantial differences in care provision....

We complement the empirical evidence on the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the first time, rigorously examine the potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were first assigned...

We test whether financial incentives have an effect on weight reduction in a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental groups. While two treatment groups obtain Euro150 and Euro300, respectively, for achieving an individually assigned target weight...

We analyse the fi nancial performance of small German hospitals based on balance sheet data of about 1,000 hospitals in 2007. Measures of fi nancial performance are the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) and the probability of default (PD). We fi nd that, on...

This paper investigates cost and profit efficiency of German hospitals. More specifically, it deals with the question how hospital efficiency varies with ownership, patient structure and other exogenous factors, which are neither inputs nor outputs of the production process. We conduct a...