This contribution contains an international comparison of preferences. Using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE), it measures willingness to pay for health insurance attributes in Germany and the Netherlands. Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made...

In developing countries like the Philippines, a major policy concern is the inequity in access to health and education services. In this paper, we investigate the effects of factors over which households have control ("choices") or none ("circumstances") on their access to basic services. Our...

The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is broader in policy coverage than conventional trade agreements for goods and, at the same time, offers governments more flexibility, in various dimensions, to tailor their obligations to sector- or country-specific needs. An overview of...

TNF-alpha inhibitors represent one of the most important areas of biopharmaceuticals by sales, with three blockbusters accounting for 8 % of total pharmaceutical sale in Norway. With use of a unique natural policy experiment in Norway, this paper examines to what extent the identity of the...

Health workforce shortages in developed countries are perceived to be central drivers of health professionals' international migration, one ramification being negative impacts on developing nations' healthcare delivery. After a descriptive international overview, selected economic issues are...

Health care, including access to medicines, is granted as a citizen's right by the Brazilian Constitution through a national health system called Unified Health System (SUS). The Pharmaceutical Care Programmes of SUS are, quite often, the only way a large part of the population has to obtain...

We exploit a policy change in Sweden to estimate the effect of copayments on the demand for children's and adolescents' usage of medical care. To this end, we use population-wide registry data including detailed characteristics of individuals and their medical visits. We examine whether the...

Although learning-by-doing is believed to be an important source of productivity growth there is limited evidence that production volume affects productivity in a causal sense. We document evidence of learning-by-doing in a high-skill profession where stakes are high; advanced cancer surgery....

Since 2009, German nursing homes have been evaluated regularly with quality report cards published online. We argue that most of the information in the report cards does not reliably measure quality of care, but a subset of seven measures does. Using a sample of more than 3,000 nursing homes...