Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

Physicians are supposed to serve patients' interests, but some are more inclined to do so than others. This paper studies how the system of health care provision affects the allocation of patients to physicians when physicians differ in altruism. We show that allowing for private provision of...

Alors que les prix pratiqués par les médecins de secteur 1 sont fixés et régulés, les médecins de secteur 2 ont la possibilité de pratiquer avec « tact et mesure » des dépassements d’honoraires pour les mêmes actes. Depuis le 1 er décembre 1989, l’accès au secteur 2 est...

The purpose of this paper is to study hospital costs in the event of introduction of a Prospective Payment System in France. We use a nested three dimensional database (stays-hospitals-years) to identify hospital unobservable heterogeneity and a transitory moral hazard component of cost...

Healthcare had long remained free of competition. Public regulatory authorities used to manage financing and strictly monitor the health productive system with country-specific mechanisms. Several factors now broaden competitive mechanisms. These include new paramedical markets, further...

One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...