This paper investigates the factors that determine differences across OECD countries in health outcomes, using data on life expectancy at age 65, over the period 1960 to 2007. We estimate a production function where life expectancy depends on health and social spending, lifestyle variables, and...

One cornerstone of current attempts to reform the German public health care system by introducing private insurance schemes is the assumption that economic incentives play an important role in individual decision-making about using medical help. This hypothesis is examined for the case of demand...

We provide comparable evidence on the patterns and trends in obesity across the Atlantic and analyse whether there are economic rationales for public intervention to control obesity. We take into account equity issues as well as efficiency considerations, which are organized around three...

The public economic burden of shifting trends in population health remains uncertain. Sustained increases in obesity, diabetes, and other diseases could reduce life expectancy - with a concomitant decrease in the public-sector's annuity burden - but these savings may be offset by worsening...

Using a matched insurant-general practitioner panel data set, we estimated the effect of a general health-screening program on individuals' health status and health care cost. To account for selection into treatment, we used regional variations in the intensity of exposure to supply-determined...

This paper investigates the link between health care expenditures and GDP for a sample of 21 OECD countries using recent developed panel cointegration techniques. In contrast to previous studies, the analysis accounts for the fact that health care expenditures are not only determined by income....

This paper reconsiders the long-run economic relationship between health care expenditure and income using a panel of 20 OECD countries observed over the period 1971-2004. In particular, the paper studies the non-stationarity and cointegration properties between health care spending and income....

This paper estimates the effect of minimum wage regulation in 16 OECD countries, 1970-2008. Our treatment is motivated by Neumark and Wascher's (2004) seminal cross-country study using panel methods to estimate minimum wage effects among teenagers and young adults. Apart from the longer time...

In the neoclassical production functions model technical change (TC) is assumed to be exogenous and it is specified as a function of time. However, some exogenous external factors other than time can also affect the rate of TC. In this paper we model TC via a combination of time trend (purely...

The paper evaluates the German health care reform of 1997, using the individual number of doctor visits as outcome measure. A new econometric model, the Probit-Poisson-log-normal model with correlated errors, describes the data better than existing count data models. Moreover, it has an...