Declining fertility and increasing longevity have rendered public pension systems in many OECD countries unsustainable and have triggered substantial reforms of these systems. One of the officially declared reform objectives is to raise the average retirement age. Crucial parameters for this...

We report results of a survey of a representative sample of the German population in which respondents were asked in various scenarios for their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a gain of one quality-adjusted life year. While one version of the survey exactly copied the setting (online survey) and...

In the expected-utility theory of the monetary value of a statistical life, the so-called "dead-anyway" effect discovered by Pratt and Zeckhauser (1996) asserts that an individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for small reductions in mortality risk increases with the initial level of risk. Their...

A recent experimental study by Falk and Szech (Science, 2013) concludes that „markets erode moral values”. If this were true, economists, who have emphasized the efficiency enhancing effects of markets for centuries, would have to reconsider their judgments fundamentally. This would be no...

20 years ago, Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999) established the by now famous "red-herring" hypothesis, according to which population ageing does not lead to an increase in per capita health care expenditures (HCE) because the observed positive correlation between age and health care expenditures...

One of the most important controversies in health economics concerns the question whether the imminent aging of the population in most OECD countries will place an additional burden on the tax payers who finance public health care systems. Proponents of the "red-herring hypothesis" argue that...

20 years ago, Zweifel, Felder and Meier (1999) established the by now famous "red-herring" hypothesis, according to which population ageing does not lead to an increase in per capita health care expenditures (HCE) because the observed positive correlation between age and health care expenditures...

One of the most important controversies in health economics concerns the question whether the imminent aging of the population in most OECD countries will place an additional burden on the tax payers who finance public health care systems. Proponents of the "red-herring hypothesis" argue that...