In the wake of the USA's refusal to ratify the Kyoto agreement on curbing greenhouse gas emissions, this article pledges for a national energy policy beyond Kyoto, based on local external effects stemming from the combustion of fossil fuels. Due to varying external effects a national policy will...

Over the past 50 years Germans have spent a rising share of their income on health and enjoyed substantially longer lives as a result. The rising health share can be explained by a standard economic model: As people get richer they purchase additional years of life and less additional...

This contribution purports to come up with reform proposals that promise to improve the benefit-cost ratio in health from the point of view of taxpayers and (potential) patients. It starts by noting that a high and increasing share of health care expenditure in the GDP does not per se indicate a...

This contribution seeks to answer two questions, (1) What are the reasons for a demand for social health insurance (SHI)?, and (2) What are the limits to the growth of SHI? A review of the reasons for the existence of SHI reveals that while economists have emphasized the possible contribution of...