This paper analyses the effects of hospital closures in Germany in the context of emergency medical care for patients with acute myocardial infarction or hemorrhagic stroke. Using a comprehensive inpatient care data, I evaluate the extent of the impact of hospital closures between 2006 and 2012...

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...

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...

This paper empirically assesses the relative role of health plan prices, service quality and optional benefits in the decision to choose a health plan. We link representative German SOEP panel data from 2007 to 2010 to (i) health plan service quality indicators, (ii) measures of voluntary...

This paper examines the causal effect of the experience of a hospital with treating hip fractures (volume) on treatment outcome for patients. A full sample of administrative data from Germany for the year 2007 is used. We apply an instrumental variable approach to eliminate endogeneity concerns...

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...

Increasing long-term care demand raises the need of high quality care in nursing homes. This study analyses whether higher prices have a causal effect on quality of care in Swiss nursing homes and assesses the extent of cross-subsidization between different price components. We use...

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...