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...

The health status of people is a precious commodity and central to economic, socio-political, and environmental dimensions of any country. Yet it is often the missing statistic in all general statistics, demographics, and presentations about the portrait of immigrants and natives. In this paper...

Empirical studies show that years of schooling are positively correlated with good health. The implication may go from education to health, from health to education, or from factors that influence both variables. We formalize a model that determines an individual's demand for knowledge and...

A large literature has analyzed pricing inefficiencies in health insurance markets due to adverse selection, typically assuming informed, active consumers on the demand side of the market. However, recent evidence suggests that many consumers have information frictions that lead to suboptimal...

The paper analyses theoretically what role fiscal councils could play and surveys empirically the activities of existing councils. Case studies of the Swedish Fiscal Policy Council and the UK Office for Budget Responsibility are done. It is concluded that fiscal councils should be advisory,...

The foreign debts of the European countries are at the core of the current crises. Generally, the crises are attributed to government budget deficits in excess of the values stated in the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP)/Maastricht treaty. Proposals for reform generally involve increasing the...

Distance related variables typically vary in a cross-section dimension but less so in a time dimension across cities, regions, or countries. The enlargement of the EU or the introduction of the euro, however, can be looked upon as integration shocks that are informative of the consequences of...

This paper presents a review of the most significant fiscal rules policymakers can choose from. The insights from this review are then applied to the current budgetary situation of the European Union. In the European Union, the supranational Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) should provide the...

An increasing number of central banks implement monetary policy via two standing facilities: a lending facility and a deposit facility. In this paper we show that it is socially optimal to implement a non-zero interest rate spread. We prove this result in a dynamic general equilibrium model...

This study assesses the short and long-run behaviour of long-term sovereign bond yields in OECD countries, for the period 1973-2008. We employ a dynamic panel approach to reflect financial and economic integration, and to increase the performance and accuracy of the tests. Given the existence of...