In this paper we describe and analyse a demographic data base that has been gathered for several EU countries under a research project called AGIR. The project tries to establish facts and evidence on the ageing process in EU countries and relate this process with health and retirement issues....

This paper studies how stress affects the mortality risk. Using a flexible approach and allowing for timevarying treatment effects, I find no impact of stress on the short-run mortality risk but a substantially increase in the long-run. The effects are especially pronounced for men. I provide...

This paper analyses the volume-outcome relationship and the effects of minimum volume regulations in the German hospital sector. We use a full sample of administrative data from the unselected, complete German hospital population for the years 2005 to 2007. We apply regression methods to analyze...

This paper investigates the relationship between health outcomes and variations in staffing levels as approximated by admissions on weekdays versus admissions on weekends. Because days of admission are potentially endogenous, we instrument on emergency admissions only, which are reasonably...

This paper examines the effects of hospital case volume on quality of care on the example of intact abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and hip fracture (HIP). We conduct the analysis on patient level with multiple logistic regression analysis. Quality is measured with a binary variable which...

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...