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...

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...

A number of recent empirical studies document significant effects of in-patient care quality indicators on the choice of hospital. These studies use either objective quality indicators based on quantitative figures, or if subjective reputation scores are used, scores based on the opinion of...

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...

Existing literature analyzing the choice of received long-term care by frail elderly (65+ years) predominantly focuses on physical and psychological conditions of elderly people as factors that influence the decision for a particular type of care. Until now, however, the regional in-patient...

Informal care by close family members is the main pillar of most long-term care systems. However, due to demographic ageing the need for long-term care is expected to increase while the informal care potential is expected to decline. From a budgetary perspective, informal care is often viewed as...

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...

In this paper, I estimate a dynamic structural model of labor supply, retirement, and informal care supply, incorporating labor market frictions and the German tax and benefit system. I find that informal elderly care has adverse and persistent effects on labor market outcomes and therefore...

Over the last years, public smoking bans have been introduced in most European countries. Unlike elsewhere, in Germany such bans were introduced at state level at different points in time, which provides important intra-country regional variation that can be exploited to identify the effects of...