This paper addresses a question that has so far been partially neglected by the literature: does public health care expenditure crowd out private health care expenditure? It shows that with an undersupply of public health, public and private health care may behave as complements even if they are...

Public drug expenditures increased markedly in recent years across Italian Regions and they have become an important issue in the debate on health care cost containment. This paper uses Italian regional data to investigate the determinants of pharmaceutical expenditures. The study differs from...