In this paper we assess the relative effectiveness of user charges and administrative waiting times as a tool for rationing public healthcare in Italy. We measure demand elasticities by estimating a simultaneous equation model of GP primary care visits, public specialist consultations and...

Objectives: Covariate explanation of clinical trial cost and outcome is critical to allow reliable estimates of cost-effectiveness. The ordinary simultaneous equations approach however must specify a bivariate distribution for both cost and health outcome that is not typically a product of the...

This paper investigates formation of expected longevity in an elderly popu- lation. We use Italian data from the early (2004) release of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). The SHARE provides a numerical measure for subjective survival probability (SSP). To assess...

One of the main motivations for productivity analysis is to assess the scope for overall improvements in the output possibilities of individual producers. At times of fiscal and government budgetary pressures, attention focuses particularly on the output potential of public service providers and...

Applying Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to real-world public policy issues can raise many interesting complications beyond those considered in standard models of DEA. One of these complications arises if the funding levels of public service providers, and their ability to attract and retain...

This work aims to assess risk perception of smokers in reporting survival expectations and subjective health. In particular, the analysis investigates individuals’ perception of smoking effects in the short and long-term and whether they believe that such detrimental effects can be reversed....

This paper shows that, by disentangling the degree of monopolistic distortion from the elasticity of substitution between domestic and im-ported goods, we can obtain a negative response of the trade balance to positive monetary shocks, without introducing capital accumula-tion. This result could...

The discernment of relevant factors driving health care utilization constitutes one important research topic in Health Economics. This issue is frequently addressed through specification of regression models for health care use (y – often measured by number of doctor visits) including, among...

Attention has been given recently to the Concentration Index; specifically, corrected versions have been generated that supersede the original with properties such as transform invariance, reversal invariance and transfer invariance. While previous studies have promoted a transformed or...