Patient empowerment calls for an intensified participation of (informed) patients with more treatment opportunities to choose from. A growing body of literature argues that confronting consumers with too many opportunities can lead to a choice overload (CO) resulting in uncertainty that the...

Policies aimed to spur quality competition among health care providers are ubiquitous, but their impact on quality is ex ante ambiguous. This study contributes to the sparse empirical literature on primary care quality by examining the heterogeneous impact of recent competition enhancing reforms...

A common reform used to increase consumer choice and competition in public services has been to allow private providers to compete with public incumbents. However, there remains a concern that not all consumers are able to benefit equally from wider choice. We consider the case of publicly...