Prof. Dr. Bernd Raffelhüschen, Stefan Fetzer und Christian Hagist, Universität Freiburg, untersuchen mit Hilfe der Generationenbilanzierung, welche Auswirkungen die aktuellen Vorschläge (nämlich Bürgerversicherung oder Gesundheitsprämien) zur Reform der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung,...

Aktuell weisen die Krankenkassen und der Gesundheitsfonds Überschüsse von über 20 Mrd. Euro auf. Für Daniel Bahr, Bundesminister für Gesundheit, eröffnen diese Überschüsse – neben der Abschaffung der Praxisgebühr – Spielräume für Prämien. Die zentrale Herausforderung an eine...

Klaus-Dirk Henke, TU Berlin und Wolfram Richter, TU Dortmund, identifizieren in ihrem Kommentar gravierende Ordnungsdefizite beim Wettbewerb im deutschen Gesundheitswesen. Sie gehen solchen Defiziten im Bereich der GKV nach und benennen konkrete Mängel, die von der Politik behoben werden sollten.

Many governments have banned strikes in public transportation. Whether this can be justified depends on whether strikes endanger public safety or health. We use time-series and cross-sectional variation in powerful registry data to quantify the effects of public transit strikes on urban...

In a model where consumers have quasi-hyperbolic preferences, we compare immediate subsidies paid for health-conscious consumption and future subsidies rewarding good health outcome. We characterize the subsidy rates which implement the unbiased choice. These rates differ because of two...

The distribution of health inequalities appears to exhibit a different pattern when samples of developing countries are examined. One explanation is the existence of a health Kuznets' curve. This paper sets out as an exploratory analysis to test the latter hypothesis of an inverse U shape...

This paper investigates competition between health insurance companies under different financing regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find that...

We study the impact of short-term exposure to ambient air pollution on the spread and severity of Covid-19 in Germany. We combine data on county-by-day level on confirmed cases and deaths with information on local air quality and weather conditions and exploit short-term variation in the...

Although the elderly are more vulnerable to COVID-19, the empirical evidence suggests that they do not behave more cautiously in the pandemic than younger individuals. This theoretical model argues that some individuals might not comply with the COVID-19 measures to reassure themselves that they...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...