We study effects of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) in a mar- ket with two pharmaceutical firms providing horizontally dierentiated (branded) drugs. Patients varying in their susceptability to medication are a prioriuninformed of available medication. Physicians making the prescription...

According to the business literature a firm's competitive position is determined by the nature of the market. In a 'premium' market, profit leadership falls to firms of- fering high quality, whereas in a 'value' market, it falls to low quality providers, which on grounds of a cost advantage...

We consider resource allocation within an organisation when agents have a preference for autonomy and show how delegation bears on moral hazard and adverse selection. Agents may care about autonomy for reasons of job-satisfaction, status or greater reputation of perform-ance under autonomy....

We model and compare the bargaining process between a purchaser of health services, such as a health authority, and a provider (the hospital) in three plausible scenarios: a) the purchaser sets the price, and activity is bargained between the purchaser and the provider: activity bargaining; b)...

In many public health care systems treatment is rationed by waiting time. We examine the optimal allocation of a .xed supply of a treatment between di¤erent groups of patients. Even in the absence of any distributional aims welfare is increased by third degree waiting time discrimination....

The optimal allocation of a public health care budget across treatments must take account of the way in which care is rationed within treatments since this will affect their marginal value. We investigate the optimal allocation rules for health care systems where user charges are fixed and care...

The increased availability of process measures implies that quality of care is in some areas de facto verifiable. Optimal price-setting for verifiable quality is well-described in the incentive-design literature. We seek to narrow the large gap between actual price-setting behaviour in...

Rationing by waiting time is commonly used in health care systems with zero or low money prices. Some systems prioritise particular types of patient and offer them lower waiting times. We investigate whether prioritisation is welfare improving when the benefit from treatment is the sum of two...

We present a model of contracting between a purchaser of health services and a provider (a hospital). We assume that hospitals provide two alternative treatments for a given diagnosis: a less intensive one (for example a medical treatment) and a more intensive one (surgical treatment). We assume...

Waiting times are commonly used in the health sector to ration demand. We show that when money charges (coinsurance rates) are optimally set and there are no redistributional considerations, it is never optimal to have a positive waiting time if the marginal cost of waiting is higher for...