This article examines the choice of health care in Japan for patients suffering from the common cold.

This paper examines the choice of health care for minor aliments in Japan for patients suffering from thirteen different minor aliments. Original data were obtained from a survey conducted by the authors. For the common cold, shoulder/neck pain, backache, constipation/diarrea, asthenopia,...

Models which estimate influenza mortality probably overestimate this mortality because their baseline estimates include only nonepidemic weeks. We present a stochastic frontier estimation model which better reflects influenza mortality.