GOOD HEALTH IS A CRUCIAL PART OF WELL-BEING BUT SPENDING ON HEALTH CAN BE JUSTIFIED ON ECONOMIC GROUNDS. THE GOAL OF REDUCING POVERTY PROVIDES A DIFFERENT BUT EQUALLY POWERFUL CASE FOR HEALTH INVESTMENTS. HOWEVER, IF POLICYMAKERS ARE TO ACCELERATE THE SUBSTANTIAL HEALTH GAINS OF RECENT DECADES,...

Good health is a crucial part of well-being but spending on health can be justified on economic grounds. The goal of reducing poverty provides a different but equally powerful case for health investments. However, if policymakers are to accelerate the substantial health gains of recent decades,...

To judge a health care system, it is necessary to analyse its results in terms of health and to bring them back to its economic effectiveness. Health outcomes can be evaluated in several ways but none of them is really representative. To locate the performance in terms of health for the French...

The study of the stylized facts of economic growth has allowed an advance of this field of economic analysis in its empirical and theorical works. Today, Health Economics is faced with new requirements of society, i.e. better care at a sustainable cost. Furthermore, since the problems linked...

The study highlights the large and rising cost of the disease: an estimated $132 billion, or approximately $92 billion in direct healthcare expenditures and $40 billion in lost productivity attributed to missed workdays, disability, and early mortality. After adjusting for differences in...

The diffusion of health care technology is influenced by both the total market share of managed care organizations as well as the level of competition among them. This paper differentiates between HMO penetration and competition and examines their relationship to the adoption of cardiac...

Painkilling drugs produce a good called relief which reduces the fixed level of bad (pain) the individual is endowed with. These drugs have the side-effect of reducing the utility the individual gets from consuming goods. This means that the shadow price of relief counts not only the cost of...

Although a number of studies have been conducted on health production functions, little attention has been given to pharmaceuticals as a separate input into the production of health. Building upon existing published work, this paper uses an alternative specification and more recent data to...

The discussion about health care systems focuses on the dynamics of expenditures and on the weak growth of revenues. In this discussion it is widely overseen that medical expenditures and the supply of medical services depend crucially on the compensation of physician services. The paper...

The health care industry is being transformed. Large firms are merging and acquiring other firms. Alliances and contractual relations between players in this market are shifting rapidly. Within the next few years, many markets are predicted to be dominated by a few large firms. Antitrust...