This discussion paper resulted in an article in <I>Journal of Health Economics</I> (2013). Volume 32, issue 6, pages 1180-93.<P> Public providers have no financial incentive to respect their legal obligation to exempt the poor from user fees. Health Equity Funds (HEFs) aim to make exemptions effective by...</p></i>

Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

We estimate the impact on health care utilization and out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditures of a major reform in Thailand that extended health insurance to one-quarter of the population to achieve universal coverage while keeping health spending below 4% of GDP. Identification is through comparison...

We provide evidence from a large-scale field experiment on the causal effects of audit rules on compliance in a market for long-term care. In this setting care should be provided quickly and, therefore, the gatekeeper introduced ex-post auditing. Our results do not show significant effects of...

This discussion paper has led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001429211200044X">'European Economic Review'</A>, 56(4), 669-90.<P>We investigate the presence of moral hazard and advantageous or adverse selection in a market for supplementary health insurance. For this we specify and estimate dynamic models for health insurance...</p></a>

We study entrepreneurs’ behavioral responses of effort (moral hazard) to avoid business failure.This is done in the context of an unemployment insurance scheme for self-employed, wherewe estimate how much of the transition probability to unemployment can be causally attributedto being insured....

We explore the role of firms in insuring non-verifiable output. As a device that allows workers to commit to thedelivery of their output, the firm arises endogenously as an alternative to the market if workers are sufficiently riskaverse and the firm can base its incentive payments on good...

Several economists have directed our attention to a finding in the social psychological literature that extrinsic motivation may undermine intrinsic motivation. The self-perception (SP) theory developed by Bem (1972) explains this finding. The crux of this theory is that people remember their...