This paper considers the role of ownership form for the financial performance of German acute care hospitals and its development over time.We measure financial performance by a hospital-specific yearly probability of default (PD). Using a panel of hospital data, our models allow for state...

This paper investigates the relationship between health outcomes and variations in staffing levels as approximated by admissions on weekdays versus admissions on weekends. Because days of admission are potentially endogenous, we instrument on emergency admissions only, which are reasonably...

In times of peak demand hospitals may fail to deliver the high standard of treatment quality that they are able to offer their patients at regular times. To assess the magnitude of these effects, this study analyzes the effects of low staff-to-patients ratios on patient outcomes empirically. We...

This paper studies the internationalization behaviour of French companies, using more than 330.000 observations for three two-year intervals. We analyze the role of productivity, organisational and ownership structure, and of financial characteristics for the decision to enter into and exit from...

This paper contributes to the analysis of policy measures that attempt to reduce health care expenditures of insurers. We examine the impact of a cash bonus program for preventive health behavior of a German health insurer on prevention effort and health care expenditures using a unique...

We test whether financial incentives have an effect on weight reduction in a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental groups. While two treatment groups obtain €150 and €300, respectively, for achieving an individually assigned target weight...

We complement the empirical evidence on the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the first time, rigorously examine the potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were first assigned...

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

The objective of this paper is to identify selected forces of the decrease in the number of avoidable deaths from ischaemic heart diseases (IHD) in West and East Germany from 1996 to 2004. Our main result reveals that the number of intracardiac catheter facilities,which are an important...

Over the last 20 years, acute care hospitals in most OECD have built up costly overcapacities. From the perspective of economic policy, it is desirable to know how hospitals of different ownership form respond to changes in demand and are probably best suited to deal with existing...