Within the debate about the rise of costs in the German health system, the argument has put forth that patients' excessive demand for benefits is caused by the existence of a moral hazard problem. One way of influencing an insured person's consumer behaviour is the introduction of several...

SaniRegio is an econometric model, based on fixed effects panel techniques, that investigates the level of efficiency of Italian Regions in governing their health care systems. As a result of the model, we obtain a measure of the efficient or standardized expenditure that may be compared to the...

Assisting technologies aim to provide more support in the meeting of one's daily needs and the preservation of one's autonomy and quality of life. Continual developments in medicine, medical equipment, nursing and medical care are assumed to lead to new types of care being created. A high degree...

The paper is concerned with the efficient organization of contractual relationships between health insurers and providers. An introduction to relevant aspects of contract theory is followed by their adaptation to the characteristics of the health care system. The focus lies on an ex ante...

Professor Becker´s 1956 paper about free banking was originally intended as a reaction to the 100-percent reserve proposals that were then popular at the University of Chicago. Today the original paper clearly illustrates how considerably our views and theories about free banking have evolved...

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it presents a very concise way of measuring fiscal stance. This procedure is based on the assumption that the ‘neutral change’ in the government budget can best be simulated with a long-term approximation of the underlying trend of total output....

This paper analyses the dynamics and significance of supply sectors in planning the economic policy, in particular the impact (manufacturing, agriculture and services) on economic growth through 1970 – 2011 and three cohorts. In these sense, it uses the following tools: co-movements and multi...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze monetary integration through the correlation of business cycles across countries. In this context, different estimation methods have been used in real GDP data (Dollars in base 1995) for 8 Southern Mediterranean countries of the (SMC) and covering the...

We estimate a two-sector DSGE model with financial intermediaries—a-la Gertler and Karadi 2011) and Gertler and Kiyotaki (2010)—and quantify the importance of financial shocks in accounting for aggregate and sectoral fluctuations. Our results indicate a significant role of financial market...

Using quarterly financial statements and stock market data from 1982 to 2010 for the six largest Canadian chartered banks, this paper documents positive co-movement between Canadian banks’ capital buffer and business cycles. The adoption of Basel Accords and the balance sheet leverage cap...