This paper surveys the decision-theoretic foundations of health care production and derives policy implications. The priority at the beginning of the 21st century must be to accelerate the diffusion of new medical knowledge, a public good, so that the efficiency in the adoption of new technology...

We analyze the impact of national pharmaceutical regulation on the launch delay of new chemical entities approved by the EMEA’s centralized procedure. We find that direct price control regimes have a significantly negative impact on the launch timing. These results cannot be found when...

This paper surveys the global health economy, with special emphasis on the allocation of resources, the measurement of medical outcomes and the determinants of international variation. The paper also discusses policy reforms in the major industrialized countries and assesses recent and current...

The authors consider a symmetric model composed of two countries and a firm in each country. Firms produce the same good by means of a polluting technology which uses fossil energy. However, these firms can adopt a clean technology which uses a renewable energy having a lower unit cost....

This article describes the new ACE-type system implemented in Italy since 2012. The authors first show that this system reduces but does not eliminate the financial distortion due to interest deductibility. Using a dataset of Italian companies, the authors analyze the impact of this relief on...

This paper analyzes if unemployment can be reduced through labor tax cuts that are financed in a revenue neutral way through energy tax increases. In contrast to other papers on this topic we consider investment behavior of firms in energy saving technologies, irreversibilities, embodied...

We analyze the interaction among important institutional variables in the labor market (firing costs, minimum wages and unemployment benefits) in determining firm-provided training. We find that the institutional interactions - specifically, their degree of complementarity and substitutability -...

The proposal involves the establishment of ?welfare accounts? for every person in a country. There are to be four accounts: a retirement account (covering pensions), an unemployment account (covering unemployment support), a human capital account (covering education and training), and a health...

Genetic resources are living organisms that contain genetic information which is of importance for biotechnological research and development. Facing an accelerated worldwide loss in species diversity, the question is whether commercial trade with genetic resources can generate sufficient...

As consumers' demand for organic products grows, selling organic products potentially opens up profitable market participation options for farmers in developing countries. This paper studies two aspects of profitability for the producers. It uses hedonic demand theory and empirical analysis to...