The International Obesity Taskforce calls obesity one of the most important medical and public health problems of our time. An estimated 1 billion people around the world are over weight, of whom around 300 million are clinically obese. Estimates suggest that obesity levels will continue to rise...

This paper investigates the impact of policy shifts on disaggregated health expenditure- GDP relationship for Australia and the USA. In contrast to previous studies the disaggregation is at the level of type of service delivered and not at the level of source of expenditure. Our results show...

This paper empirically investigates the distribution dynamics of resource allocation decisions across Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs), in a continuing Prospective Payment System (PPS). The theoretical literature suggests a PPS could lead to moral hazard effects, where hospitals have an incentive...

The overall objective of the paper is to model and econometrically analyze the impact of access costs (travel time to hospital) and quality of health care on the utilization of elective health services in public hospitals. We argue that patients might face a trade-off between better perceived...