We use instrumental variable methods to investigate whether the impact of parental smoking habits on their children's smoking decisions is a causal one. We find evidence of same-sex role models in two-parent households: mothers play a crucial role in determining their daughters' smoking...

We determine the optimal health policy mix when the average utility of patients increases with the supply of drugs available in a therapeutic class. Health risk coverage rely on two instruments, copayment and reference pricing, that affect the supported risk composed by health expenses and...

This study examines the relationship between healthcare expenditure and disposable income in the 50 US states over the period 1966-2009 using fractional integration and cointegration techniques. The degree of integration and non-linearity of both series are found to vary considerably across...

Macroeconomic downturns can have an important impact on the availability of informal and formal long-term care. This paper investigates how the market for informal care changed during and after the Great Recession in Europe. We use data from the Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe,...

This paper studies the effects of price regulation and parallel imports in the on-patent pharmaceutical market. In a theory model where the producer price is subject to bargaining between the brand-name producer and a distributor, we show that the effects of stricter price regulation crucially...

This paper investigates the relationship between health insurance coverage and risky health behaviors among young adults using the confidential version of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 Cohort (NLSY97). Before the Affordable Care Act required all employers to provide health...

A fat and a healthy good provide immediate gratification, and cause health costs or benefits in the long run, which are misperceived. Additionally, the fat good (healthy good) increases (decreases) health care costs by increasing (decreasing) the probability of suffering from a chronic disease...

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...

Much of the theoretical literature on inequality assumes that the equalisand is a cardinal variable like income or wealth. However, health status is generally measured as a categorical variable expressing a qualitative order. Traditional solutions involve reclassifying the variable by means of...

Patient mobility is a key issue in the EU who recently passed a new law on patients’ right to EU-wide provider choice. In this paper we use a Hotelling model with two regions that differ in technology to study the impact of patient mobility on health care quality, health care financing and...