According to the relative income hypothesis, an individual's health depends on the distribution of income in a reference group, as well as on the income of the individual. We use data on 231,208 individuals in Great Britain from 19 rounds of the General Household Survey between 1979 and 2000 to...

The increased availability of process measures implies that quality of care is in some areas de facto verifiable. Optimal price-setting for verifiable quality is well-described in the incentive-design literature. We seek to narrow the large gap between actual price-setting behaviour in...

We analyse the demand for and the supply of night visits in primary care. A model of demand management by general practitioners and of their choice between meeting demand by making visits themselves or passing them to commercial deputising services is presented. Demand and supply equations are...

We construct a simple model of the determinants of administrative managerial effort and apply it explain the doubling of the cost of administering primary care in England in real terms between 1989/90 and 1994/5 following the introduction of the internal market. We find that the main cost driver...

It has been suggested that, especially in countries with high per capita income, there is an independent effect of income distribution on the health of individuals. One source of evidence in support of this relative income hypothesis are analyses of aggregate cross section data on population...

We model a system akin to the British National Health Service in which general practictioners (GPs) are paid from general taxation. GPs are horizontally and vertically differentiated and compete via their imperfect observed quality. We focus on the way in which patient uncertainty and switching...

We present a simple dynamic model of the demand and supply for elective surgery in the NHS and test it using a panel of quartely data for 123 English health authorities from the second quarter of 1987 to the first quarter of 1993. We find that supply is increasing in measures of the previous...

We use data from the Health Service Indicators database to compare different methods of measuring the performance of English Family Health Services Authorities (FHSAs) in providing primary care. A variety of regression and data envelopment analysis methods are compared as summary efficiency...

We examine the implications of policies to improve information about the qualities of profit seeking duopoly hospitals which face the same regulated price and compete on quality. We show that if the hospital costs of quality are similar then better information increases the quality of both...

Rationing by waiting time is commonly used in health care systems with zero or low money prices. Some systems prioritise particular types of patient and offer them lower waiting times. We investigate whether prioritisation is welfare improving when the benefit from treatment is the sum of two...