Health care decision makers are required to make planning decisions over a medium to long term planning horizon. Whilst population ageing is an important consideration for planners, age-stratified demographic models may produce misleading estimates of future resource requirements if the actual...

The level and distribution of patient waiting times for elective treatment is a major concern in publicly funded health care systems. Strict targets, which have specified maximum waiting times, have been introduced in the NHS over the last decade and have been criticised for distorting existing...

The aim of The Elgar Companion to Health Economics is to take an audience of advanced undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers to the frontier of research in health economics, by providing them with short and easily readable introductions to key topics. The volume brings together 50...

In this paper we consider how State investments can crowd out or reinforce self-investments in health using a theoretical model of insurance and protection. We apply this model to the smoking cessation decision made by individuals diagnosed with a cardiovascular disease using data from the 1998,...

We examine how public sector third-party purchasers and hospitals negotiate quality targets when a fixed proportion of hospital revenue is required to be linked to quality. We develop a bargaining model linking the number of quality targets to purchaser and hospital characteristics. Using data...

We investigate the distributional consequences of two different waiting times initiatives, one in Norway, and one in Scotland. The primary focus of Scotland's recent waiting time reforms, introduced in 2003, and modified in 2005 and 2007, has been on reducing maximum waiting times through the...

Although there is a substantial literature on the determinants of demand for primary care, few studies have been able to examine how these determinants respond to higher supply. Some demand studies include supply variables or regional dummy variables to allow for different supply conditions. A...