The use of day case surgery has increased rapidly as an alternative to inpatient surgery. Little is known, however, about the value of day case surgery to patients. The aim of this paper was to develop a contingent valuation survey to investigate how individuals value the costs of shifting from...

This paper aims to estimate a translog stochastic frontier production function with panel data of 147 mixed Catalan farms in a five-year period. The mean output efficiency in the period analysed was estimated to be 62.3%. We added management variables to the traditional factors explaining farm...

The principal aim of this paper is to estimate a stochastic frontier cost function and an inefficiency effects model in the analysis of the primary health-care services purchased by the public authority and supplied by 180 providers in 1996 in Catalonia. The evidence from our sample does not...

The purpose of this paper is to obtain empirical measures of performance in the management of critical patients treated in intensive care units (ICUs) and to evaluate the factors associated with performance, in a two stage approach. In the first stage, this paper uses an extended version of Data...

This paper examines the impact of coinsurance exemption for prescription medicines applied to elderly individuals in Spain after retirement. To evaluate this coinsurance change we use a rich administrative dataset that links pharmaceutical consumption and hospital discharge records for the full...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the explanatory factors affecting introductory prices of new pharmaceuticals in a heavily regulated and highly subsidized market. We collect a data set consisting of all new chemical entities launched in Spain between 1997 and 2005, and model launch...

This paper provides empirical evidence on the explanatory factors affecting introductory prices of new pharmaceuticals in a heavily regulated and highly subsidized market. We collect a data set consisting of all new chemical entities launched in Spain between 1997 and 2005, and model launching...

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Background: In many countries with generic reference pricing, generic producers and distributors compete by means of undisclosed discounts offered to pharmacies in order to reduce acquisition costs and to induce them to dispense their generic to patients in preference over others. <Emphasis Type="Bold">Objective: The...</emphasis></emphasis>