In countries like the US and the Netherlands health insurance is provided by private firms. These private firms can offer both individual and group contracts. The strategic and welfare implications of such group contracts are not well understood. Using a Dutch data set of about 700 group health...

This paper compares the welfare effects of three ways in which health care can be organized: no competition (NC), competition for the market (CfM) and competition on the market (CoM) where the payer offers the optimal contract to providers in each case. We argue that each of these can be optimal...

In health care systems with a competitive health insurance market, governments or other sponsors (e.g. employers) often subsidize premiums to encourage enrolment. These subsidies are typically independent of plan choice leaving the absolute premium differences in place so as not to distort...

Spillovers resulting from fiscal and monetary policy are compared and analysed in small static, small dynamic and large dynamic multi-country models. To compare the size of the spillovers, we consider simulations in which GDP for a certain number of years is held one percent above base in the...