Decisions on public health measures to contain a pandemic are often based on parameters such as expected disease burden and additional mortality due to the pandemic. Both pandemics and nonpharmaceutical interventions to fight pandemics, however, produce economic, social, and medical costs. The...

We investigate the effect of reputational motivation on output in a scenario of overprovision of medical treatment. We assume that physicians differ in their degree of altruism, enjoy being perceived as good but dislike being perceived as greedy. We show that better reputational motivation...

This paper investigates how changes in hospital choice sets affect levels of patient demand for elective hospital care. We exploit a set of reforms in England that opened up the market for publicly-funded patients to private hospitals. Impacts on demand are estimated using variation in distance...

Reforms to public services have extended consumer choice by allowing for the entry of private providers. The aim is to generate competitive pressure to improve quality when consumers choose between providers. However, for many services new entrants could also affect whether a consumer demands...

New empirical evidence shows substantial heterogeneity in the altruism of healthcare providers. Spurred by this evidence, we build a spatial quality competition model with altruism heterogeneity. We find that more altruistic healthcare providers supply relatively higher quality levels and...

In recent years, several countries have introduced non-monetary performance incentives for health care providers to improve the quality of medical care. Evidence on the effect of non-monetary feedback incentives, predominantly in the form of public quality reporting, on the quality of medical...

Long waiting lines are a common feature and a major concern in many public health care delivery systems. The waiting lines are often characterized as inefficient, because they are a burden to patients without generating any gains for providers. There is an ongoing debate in Germany regarding the...

A common reform used to increase consumer choice and competition in public services has been to allow private providers to compete with public incumbents. However, there remains a concern that not all consumers are able to benefit equally from wider choice. We consider the case of publicly...

Appointing or electing professionals to be public officials is a double-edged sword. Experts can use their rich knowledge to implement reforms, but they can also favor their own profession. In this study, we compare physician-trained state health ministers to ministers of other professions in...

Appointing or electing professionals to be public officials is a double-edged sword. Experts can use their rich knowledge to implement reforms, but they can also favor their own profession. In this study, we compare physician-trained state health ministers to ministers of other professions in...