This paper examines the role of social assistance payments (SAP or Sozialhilfe) in determining levels of life satisfaction in Germany using the SOEP 1995-2004. We find strong evidence that individuals in Germany are negatively influenced by increased SAP payments controlling for income, whether...

This paper examines the role of social assistance payments (SAP or Sozialhilfe) in determining levels of life satisfaction in Germany using the SOEP 1995–2004. We find strong evidence that individuals in Germany are negatively influenced by increased SAP payments controlling for income,...

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...

Obesity and overweight are linked to diseases that cost society a significant amount of resources. While behavior modification can reduce the problem, instigating such lifestyle changes is an uneasy task. One potential way to reduce the problem is through the use of financial incentives. In this...

The coexistence of social health insurance and private health insurance in Germany is subject to intense public debate. As only few have the opportunity to choose between the two systems, they are often regarded as privileged by the health insurance system. Applying a hazard model in discrete...

This paper delivers empirical evidence on how informal transfers are affected by a formal and country-wide health insurance scheme. Using the fifth wave of the Ghanaian Living Standard Household Survey, we investigate the extent to which the exogenous implementation of the National Health...

In Germany, individuals in need of long-term care receive support through benefits of the long-term care insurance. A central goal of the insurance is to support informal care provided by family members. Care recipients can choose between benefits in kind (formal home care services) and benefits...

Recent health policy reforms try to increase consumer choice. We use a laboratory experiment to analyze consumers’ tastes in typical contract attributes of health insurances and to investigate their relationship with individual risk preferences. First, subjects make consecutive insurance...

Healthcare utilization varies widely between regions. Yet, the causes of regional variation are still not well understood, and they can also differ between countries and institutional settings. We exploit patient migration to examine which share of regional variation in ambulatory care use in...

To equalize differences in health plan premiums due to differences in risk pools, the German legislature introduced a simple Risk Adjustment Scheme (RAS) based on age, gender and disability status in 1994. In addition, effective 1996, consumers gained the freedom to choose among hundreds of...