This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

This paper examines the tradeoffs of monitoring for wasteful public spending. By penalizing unnecessary spending, monitoring improves the quality of public expenditure and incentivizes firms to invest in compliance technology. I study a large Medicare program that monitored for unnecessary...

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The...

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector for both financing and delivery of health care. The...

Privatization has been shown to increase growth and profitability of public firms. However, effects on consumers are understudied. We study potential trade-offs in the US hospital sector where public control declined by 42% over 1983-2019. Private operators may improve hospitals' financial...

Diabetes is the fifth leading cause of death by disease in the U.S. Diabetes also contributes to higher rates of morbidity-people with diabetes are at higher risk for heart disease, blindness, kidney failure, extremity amputations, and other chronic conditions. This study estimates the direct...

We measure whether expert patients - those trained as physicians and nurses - have fewer emergency department visits and the reasons for these differences. Relative to similar patients physicians and nurses had 19.8% and 5.1% fewer ED visits, principally due to fewer avoidable visits. The...

The United States has state of the art technology and world renowned expertise in medical treatment, yet in terms of healthcare it shows a dramatically poor performance in relation to the other industrialized countries. This situation is surprising, since one would expect that a free market...