In this paper, we investigate the impact of wealth on health in South Africa using the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). We estimate a two-stage probit model with inheritance as an instrumental variable for wealth. We find no significant effect of wealth on health at the individual level,...

We investigate the causal impact of retirement on healthcare utilization using SHARE data for 10 European countries. We show that the number of doctor's visits and the probability of visiting a doctor more than four times a year (our measures of healthcare utilization) increase after retirement....

Deductibles are commonly used to tame increasing health care costs. Numerous studies find that higher deductibles reduce health care utilization. In this paper we compare utilization in Switzerland between two health care plans with deductibles of 1,500 CHF and 2,500 CHF (1CHF =1$) per calendar...

This paper investigated the delivery of health services based on data recorded at two medium-sized hospitals: Erenkoy Mental Health Research and Training Hospital located in Istanbul/Turkey and LVR-Klinik Viersen in Germany. A comparison of quality management systems in terms of certification...

In the very recent past, the Lombardy health care system – established in 1997 on the quasi market model – has caught the interest of researchers and politicians in different OECD countries11See for example the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, R2.. Its merits, compared to other...

This report describes the organization of the Belgian long‐term care system. It can be characterized as a mixed system with extensive public care provision and substantial support from informal care mainly within the family. While the current volume and quality of services appears to be...

Within the debate about the rise of costs in the German health system, the argument has put forth that patients' excessive demand for benefits is caused by the existence of a moral hazard problem. One way of influencing an insured person's consumer behaviour is the introduction of several...

In recent years, decentralization of financial and political power has been perceived as a useful means to improve outcomes of the health care sector. Such reforms are often a result of fashion, rather than being based on knowledge of “what works”. If decentralization is the favored strategy...

I consider the problem of evaluating the effect of a health care reform on the demand for doctor visits when the effect is potentially different in different parts of the outcome distribution. Quantile regression is a useful technique for studying such heterogeneous treatment effects. Recent...

Regulation fostering Managed Care alternatives in health insurance is spreading. This work reports on an experiment designed to measure the amounts of compensation asked by the Swiss population (in terms of reduced premiums) for Managed-Care type restrictions in the provision of health care. It...