Abstract: Many developed countries have recently experienced sharp increases in home birth rates. This paper investigates the impact of home births on the health of low-risk newborns using data from the Netherlands, the only developed country where home births are widespread. To account for...

We study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high-risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low-risk consumers. First, we find that insurers still have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly corrects for cost differences...

Abstract: Using a newly constructed dataset on German hospitals, which includes 24 process and outcome indicators of clinical quality, we test whether quality has increased in various clinical areas since the introduction of mandatory quality reports and the online publication of part of the...

Abstract: 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...

This paper uses a dataset collected among inhabitants of Amsterdam, to study whether wages of prime age male workers are affected by the use of cannabis and cocaine.The analysis shows that cocaine use and infrequent cannabis use do not affect wages.Frequent cannabis use has a negative wage...

In this paper we use individual level data from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey to study the relationship between initiation into cannabis use and educational attainment. Using instrumental variable estimation and bivariate duration analysis we find that those initiating...

This paper studies the wage effects of the use of alcohol and tobacco.The analysis based on a recent survey in the Netherlands shows that for males the use of tobacco has a negative wage effect of about 10% while the use of alcohol has a positive wage effect of about the same size.The wages of...

This paper uses a dataset collected among inhabitants of Amsterdam, to study the employment effects of the use of cannabis and cocaine.For females no negative effects of drug use on the employment rate are found.For males there is a negative correlation between past cannabis and cocaine use and...

This paper uses information about prime age individuals living in Amsterdam, to study whether the use of alcohol, or tobacco stimulates the use cannabis, i.e. whether alcohol or cannabis are stepping stones for cannabis.The special element of the study is that it concerns the use in an...