Patient mobility is a key issue in the EU who recently passed a new law on patients’ right to EU-wide provider choice. In this paper we use a Hotelling model with two regions that differ in technology to study the impact of patient mobility on health care quality, health care financing and...

A famous idea to maintain affordable health expenditures is to cut back statutory health insurance (SHI) to a basic insurance and to introduce supplementary private health insurance (PHI), permitted to cover the remaining benefits and to apply managed care mechanisms. The measure is supposed to...

In Scandinavia, the provision of health care services has been, almost entirely, the responsibility of the public health care system. However, in the last five to seven years there has been remarkable growth in the private health care market. These health care services are obtained normally...

We estimate the impact on health care utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures of a major reform in Thailand that extended health insurance to one-quarter of the population to achieve universal coverage while keeping health spending below 4% of GDP. Identification is through comparison...

The offshore renminbi (CNH) exchange rate is the exchange rate of the Chinese currency transacted outside China. We study the CNH exchange rate dynamics and its links with onshore exchange rates. Using a specialized microstructure dataset, we find that CNH is significantly affected by its order...

The high-frequency analysis of foreign exchange dynamics is helpful in order to better identify the impact of central bank interventions. Evidence robustly shows that interventions do indeed move the exchange rate level in the desired direction. Interventions increase volatility in the short run...

France has a track record of persistent general government deficits, partly reflecting pro-cyclical fiscal policies in upswings. This has resulted in a quadrupling of its public debt-to-GDP ratio since the 1970s to above 80% of GDP. Reducing public debt is crucial because a high level of public...

I investigate the contribution of pharmaceutical innovation to recent longevity growth in Germany and France. First, I examine the effect of the vintage of prescription drugs (and other variables) on the life expectancy and age-adjusted mortality rates of residents of Germany, using...

In this fascinating new field, this paper offers some reflections on portability of social benefits, and tries to identify promising research topics. These reflections are organized in three sections. The first analyzes the channels that underpin the positive value of portability of social...