Informal payments are deeply ingrained in the health care sector of most Central, Eastern and Southern European countries. Evidence suggests that the price paid informally to medical staff is negotiated either directly or indirectly between patients and medical staff. The aim of this paper is to...

In 2006, the Netherlands commenced market based reforms in its health care system. The reforms included selective contracting of health care providers by health insurers. This paper focuses on how health insurers may increase their market share on the health insurance market through selective...

This paper analyses the situation when employees fail to adapt to overall job dissatisfaction. By combining the existing knowledge in economics on job lock and in psychology on employees’ feeling of being ‘stuck’ at work, the paper explains why some employees fail to adapt when...

Out-of-pocket patient payments can impose a catastrophic burden on households. This problem may not only affect poor but also wealthy households who need to use health care frequently. The available literature offers no consensus on how to measure poverty and how to measure the effects of...

Outside the health care sector, consumer preferences have been effectively studied using rating and ranking conjoint techniques. In the health care sector this technique has received less attention than its choice-based variant. Applications of rating and ranking method to health care issues are...