The aim of this paper is to empirically analyse the responses by general practitioners to promotional activities for pharmaceuticals by pharmaceutical companies. Promotion can be beneficial for society as a means of providing information, but it can also be harmful in the sense that it lowers...

This paper proposes a new method for estimating annual price elasticities from market share data of health insurers. In contrast to traditional methods the elasticity is derived from bilateral price elasticities which relate the net share of switchers between two health insurers not only to...

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...

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...

Since 2003, a new set of scenario-analyses have been published by the CPB in Four Futures of Europe (de Mooij and Tang, 2003), four scenarios are sketched for the development of the European economy until 2040. The scenarios are defined in terms of two groups of 'key uncertainties'. The first...

This study presents four long term scenarios for government and health care services in the Netherlands. In 2001, the expenditure on government and health care services (including pharmaceuticals) was about 24% of Dutch GDP. According to all scenarios this will increase to between 29% and 33% of...

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...