In this paper, I examine the impact of uninsured patients on the health of the insured, focusing on one health outcome – the in-hospital mortality rate of insured heart attack patients. I employ panel data models using patient discharge and hospital financial data from California (1999-2006)....

Many countries face a continuing shortage in nurses' labour supply. Previous research suggests that nurses respond only weakly to changes in wages. We estimate a multi-sector model of nursing qualification holders' labour supply in different occupations. A structural approach allows us to model...

This paper investigates the factors influencing the allocation of time between public and private sectors by medical specialists. A discrete choice structural labour supply model is estimated, where specialists choose from a set of job packages that are characterised by the number of working...

We provide an analysis of the effect of physician payment methods on their hospital patients' length of stay and risk of readmission. To do so, we exploit a major reform implemented in Quebec (Canada) in 1999. The Quebec Government introduced an optional mixed compensation (MC) scheme for...

This paper is a contribution to the second World Happiness Report. It makes five main points. 1. Mental health is the biggest single predictor of life-satisfaction. This is so in the UK, Germany and Australia even if mental health is included with a six-year lag. It explains more of the variance...

We examine the impact of new medical information on drug safety on preventive health behavior. We exploit the release of the findings of the Women's Health Initiative Study (WHIS) – the largest randomized controlled trial of women's health – which demonstrated in 2002 that long-term Hormone...

Pay for performance (P4P) incentives for physicians are generally designed as additional payments that can be paired with any existing payment mechanism such as salary, fee-for-service, and capitation. However, the link between the physician response to performance incentives and the existing...

Using state-level data for the period 1990 through 2007, we estimate the effect of legalizing medical marijuana on suicide rates. Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5 percent reduction in the total suicide rate, an 11 percent reduction in...

Using a matched insurant-general practitioner panel data set, we estimated the effect of a general health-screening program on individuals' health status and health care cost. To account for selection into treatment, we used regional variations in the intensity of exposure to supply-determined...

We examine the effects of fast-food restaurant advertising on television on the body composition of adolescents as measured by percentage body fat (PBF) and to assess the sensitivity of these effects to using conventional measures of youth obesity based on body-mass index (BMI). We merge...