Quality report cards addressing information asymmetry in the health care market have become a popular strategy used by policymakers to improve the quality of care for elderly. Using individual level data from the largest German sickness fund merged with institutional level data, we examine the...

Health Plan Choice Abstract: This paper provides field evidence on (a) how price framing affects consumers’ decision to switch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurance can be influenced by policymakers through simple regulatory efforts. In 2009, in...

This paper estimates the effect of informal care provision on female caregiver’s health. We use data from the German Socio-economic Panel and assess effects up to seven years after care provision. A simulation-based sensitivity analysis scrutinizes the sensitivity of the results with respect...

We analyze the effect of education on wages using German Socio-Economic Panel data and regional variation in mandatory years of schooling and the supply of schools. This allows us to estimate more than one local average treatment effect and heterogeneous effects for different groups of...

We analyze the effect of household indebtedness on different health outcomes using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1999–2009. To establish a causal effect, we rely on (a) fixed-eff ects methods, (b) a subsample of constantly employed individuals, and (c) lagged debt variables to...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts.We use a set of new...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

We analyse the fi nancial performance of small German hospitals based on balance sheet data of about 1,000 hospitals in 2007. Measures of fi nancial performance are the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) and the probability of default (PD). We fi nd that, on...

This paper investigates cost and profit efficiency of German hospitals. More specifically, it deals with the question how hospital efficiency varies with ownership, patient structure and other exogenous factors, which are neither inputs nor outputs of the production process. We conduct a...