Understanding the data generating process behind healthcare costs remains a key empirical issue. Although much research to date has focused on the prediction of the conditional mean cost, this can potentially miss important features of the full conditional distribution such as tail...

We conduct a quasi-Monte Carlo comparison of the recent developments in parametric and semi-parametric regression methods for healthcare costs against each other and against standard practice. The population of English NHS hospital inpatient episodes for the nancial year 2007-2008 (summed for...

This paper extends the literature on modelling healthcare cost data by applying the Generalised Beta of the Second Kind (GB2) distribution to UK data. A quasi-experimental design, estimating models on a subset of the data and evaluating performance on another subset, is used to compare this...

Conduct disorder, or persistent antisocial behaviour in children and youth, is an important public mental health problem in Canada. There is much research evidence about causal risk factors, prevention and treatment, yet little of the research is incorporated into legislative, administrative or...

This paper explores the emergence, evolution and dominance of four predominant mean-ings of the concept of medical necessity that have been used in past and current health policy debates about the appropriate level of service coverage under Canada’s health insurance pro-gram. Data for this...

Every funding system creates “incentives.” However, in real policy applications, the motivating quality of a funding change is not inherent to the funding structure. Rather, contextual factors highly determine how organizations and individuals interpret, feel motivated by, and act in...