Sick leave payments represent a significant portion of public health expenditures and labor costs. Reductions in replacement levels are a commonly used instrument to tackle moral hazard and to increase the efficiency of the health insurance market. In Germany's Statutory Health Insurance (SHI)...

Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2008, this paper analyses the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work,...

We show that the choice of the welfare measure has a substantial impact on the degree of welfare-related health inequality. Combining various income and wealth measures with different health measures, we calculate 80 health concentration indices. The influence of the welfare measure is more...

This paper provides field evidence on (a) how price framing affects consumers' decision to switch health insurance plans and (b) how the price elasticity of demand for health insurance can be influenced by policymakers through simple regulatory efforts. In 2009, in order to foster competition...

This paper exploits rich SOEP microdata to analyze state-level variation in health care utilization in Germany. Unlike most studies in the field of the Small Area Variation (SAV) literature, our approach allows us to net out a large array of individual-level and state-level factors that may...

This article evaluates an expansion of employer-mandated sick leave from 80 to 100 percent of forgone gross wages in Germany. We employ and compare parametric difference-in-difference (DID), matching DID, and mixed approaches. Overall workplace attendance decreased by at least 10 percent or 1...

An adequate theory of Life Satisfaction (LS) needs to take account of both factors that tend to stabilise LS and those that change it. The most widely accepted theory in psychology - setpoint theory - focussed solely on stability. That theory is now regarded as inadequate since several national...

This paper develops a conceptual framework that can explain why economic development goes along with increases in body weight and obesity rates. We first introduce the concept of novelty consumption, which refers to an increase in food availability due to trade or innovation. Then we study how...

This paper proposes a test for the existence and the degree of contagious presenteeism and negative externalities in sickness insurance schemes. First, we theoretically decompose moral hazard into shirking and contagious presenteeism behavior. Then we derive testable conditions for reduced...