Health spending per capita in England has more than doubled since 1997, yet relatively little is known about how that spending is distributed across the population. This paper uses administrative National Health Service (NHS) hospital records to examine key features of public hospital spending...

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...

This paper examines the impacts of private hospital entry on publicly funded elective care in England. From 2006, private hospitals were encouraged to enter certain publicly funded markets to compete with existing public hospitals and stimulate quality improvements. Studying elective hip...

This paper examines the impact of in utero exposure to the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957 upon physical and cognitive development in childhood. Outcome data is provided by the National Child Development Study (NCDS), a panel study of a cohort of British children who were all potentially...

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...

We use English household-level survey data from 1996 to 2010 to explore whether economic market failures play a significant role in explaining the presence of energy efficiency measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and full double glazing) in residential properties. There appears to...

We evaluate the large scale pilot of an innovative and major welfare intervention in Colombia, which combines homes visits by trained social workers to households in extreme poverty with preferential access to social programs. We use a randomized control trial and a very rich dataset collected...

Much of lifetime healthcare spending is concentrated at the end of life. This paper uses survey data linked to administrative hospital and mortality records to examine how the pattern of end-of-life hospital inpatient spending varies across different groups within a large public hospital system...

This paper uses linked survey responses and administrative hospital records to examine the accuracy of self-reported medical diagnoses. The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) collects self-reported information on the incidence of heart attacks, strokes and cancer in the past two years....

Recent years have seen substantial reductions in public spending on social care for older people in England. This has not only led to large falls in the number of people over the age of 65 receiving publicly funded social care, but also to growing concern about the potential knock-on effects on...