This paper investigates the effect of a major water quality improvement program in rural China on the health of adults and children. Using panel data covering about 4500 households from 1989 to 2006, I estimate the impact of introducing village-level access to water from water plants on various...

School buses contribute disproportionately to ambient air quality, pollute near schools and residential areas, and their emissions collect within passenger cabins. This paper examines the impact of school bus emissions reductions programs on health outcomes. A key contribution relative to the...

Despite progress in air pollution control, concerns remain over the health impact of poor air quality. Governments increasingly issue air quality information to enable vulnerable groups to avoid exposure. Avoidance behaviour potentially biases estimates of the health effects of air pollutants....

This paper analyzes the regulation of payment schemes for health care providers competing in both quality and product differentiation of their services. The regulator uses two instruments: a prospective payment per patient and a cost reimbursement rate. When the regulator can only use a...

By introducing n (1) firms with infinite cross-price elasticity (i.e. generic drugs), we explore the effects of competition on the optimal pricing strategies under a Reference Pricing Scheme (RPS). A two-stage model repeated infinite number of times is presented. When stage 1 is competitive, the...

The paper estimates the effect of SO2 pollution on infant mortality in Germany, 1985–2003. To avoid endogeneity problems, I exploit the natural experiment created by the mandated desulfurization at power plants and power plants’ location and prevailing wind directions, which together...

This paper examines the impact of outdoor pollution and parental smoking on children's health from birth until the age of three years in Germany. We use representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), combined with five air pollution levels. These data were provided by the...

We study gatekeeping physicians’ referrals of patients to specialty care. We derive theoretical results when competition in the physician market intensifies. First, due to competitive pressure, physicians refer patients to specialty care more often. Second, physicians earn more by treating...

While several studies suggest that stress-related mental health problems among school children are related to specific elements of schooling, empirical evidence on this causal relationship is scarce. We examine a German schooling reform that increased weekly instruction time and study its...

This paper investigates the short-term effects of public smoking bans on individual smoking behavior. In 2007 and 2008, state-level smoking bans were gradually introduced in all of Germany's federal states. We exploit this variation to identify the effect that smoke-free policies had on...