Virtual patients’ communities are developing on the Internet. These communities allow frequent interactions among patients, who can share health-related information within an interactive environment. However, we know very little about what determines patients’ online collective action on Web...

Dès son arrivée aux affaires, l’administration Clinton a entrepris une politique d’amélioration de la compétitivité de l’économie américaine par la technologie : « Technology for Economic Growth ». Cette politique, qui doit beaucoup au vice président Al Gore, vise à réorienter...

This paper analyses the potentially defensive behaviour of patent race winners and its effect on aggregate R&D effort. It proposes a quality-ladders model that endogenously determines leaders technology advantages and who innovates. Product market regulation can have either a positive or a...

Technical standards take such a big part in our daily life (cars, mobile phones, food and so on) that it seems to become an invisible phenomenon. The construction of these standards is mainly embedded in international arenas and networks. Scholars still know few of actors and know-how in this...

In many areas of health care financing, there is controversy over the sources of cost variability and about the respective roles of inefficiency versus legitimate heterogeneity. This paper proposes a payment system that creates incentives to increase hospital efficiency when hospitals are...

Price regulation and competition patterns in the ethical drug industry in france This article gives the results of an econometric modelization of the ethical drugs price and quantity determination institutionnal process for France. From price and promotion elasticities, it is shown that...

Efficient resources allocation in health area, where market failures are numerous and government regulations very large, is generally considered as requiring the support of cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness or cost-utility studies. Meanwhile many disappointments appear on the effective impact of...

Is, or should, healthcare be profitable? Over and above “private” health, does it have an effect on public health? Improved living conditions are sometimes considered to play a more important role in greater life expectancy than medicine. Even though this may have been true in the 19th...

The strategy currently adopted in France to deal with the ever-growing health expenditures is one of freezing compulsory deductions and broadening the scope of complementary insurance, while at the same time reaffirming that such insurance is optional. But individual freedom to take out...