In this paper we test the 'red herring' hypothesis for expenditures on long-term care. The main contribution of this paper is that we assess the 'red herring' hypothesis using an aggregated measure that allows us to control for entering the final period of life on the individual level. In...

In the following paper we estimate the impact of obesity in childhood on health and health service use in England using instrumental variables. We use data on children and adolescents aged 3-18 years old from fifteen rounds of the Health Survey for England (1998-2012), which has measures of...

According to the OECD Norway spends 47% more on health care per capita compared to Finland and about 30% more than the other Nordic countries. At the same time indicators of health status show that Norway is not better on important indicators of health. This raises the question of why there is...

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on population aging and growth in health expenditures. The Red Herring hypothesis, i.e., that hospital expenditures are driven by the occurrence of mortal illnesses, and not patients’ age, forms the basis of the study. The data applied in...

This paper investigates the extent to which conclusions from international comparison of health spending depend on different adjustment methods. The analysis shows, first, that health spending figures differ significantly because of different accounting standards. More specifically, spending on...

This article examines the extent to which differences in life-expectancy are associated with shifts in average hospital costs for different age groups. The size of the shift is important because it makes a large difference to the importance of demographic factors when projecting future health...

Norway has had a nationwide, biennial public screening program for breast cancer since 2005. The program includes all women aged 50-69 years. The aim of this study was to estimate the total societal costs of one screening round. The cost analysis was based on the number women in the relevant age...

Denne rapporten skal i følge oppdraget fra ESO gi en oversiktlig beskrivelse og diskusjon av problemer i helsesektorene i de nordiske land. Diskusjonen legger større vekt på bredde enn på dybde. Oversiktlige beskrivelser kombinert med teori kan bidra med innsikt for lesere som ikke vet så...

We study the impact of competition on primary care physicians’specialty referrals. Our data come from a Norwegian survey in 2008-9 and Statistics Norway. From the data we construct three measures of competition the number of open primary physician practices with and without population...

I denne rapporten beskrives trekk ved utviklingen i bruk, tilgjengelighet og fornøydhet med fastlegetjenesten etter at den ble etablert i 2001. Datamaterialet som er benyttet, er en kobling av Statistisk sentralbyrås (SSB) levekårsundersøkelser og fastlegedatabasen til Arbeids- og...