Interventions designed to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are popular among policy makers, given the role SMEs play in job creation around the world. Business support interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are often based on the assumption that market failures and...

This study seeks to provide evidence for deciding whether or not a pharmaceutical innovation should be included in the benefit list of social health insurance. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted in Germany to measure preferences for modern insulin therapy. Of the 1,100 individuals...

This paper sheds light on some unexpected consequences of health insurance regulation that may pose a big challenge to insurers’ risk management. Because mandated uniform contributions to health insurance trigger risk selection efforts risk adjustment (RA) schemes become necessary. A good deal...

Many politicians blame physician dispensing (PD) to increase health care expenditure and to undermine independence of drug prescription and income leading to a suboptimal medication. Therefore, PD is not allowed in most OECD countries. In Switzerland, PD is allowed in some regions depending on...

This contribution contains an international comparison of preferences. Using two Discrete Choice Experiments (DCE), it measures willingness to pay for health insurance attributes in Germany and the Netherlands. Since the Dutch DCE was carried out right after the 2006 health reform, which made...

This article assesses how the form of the utility function in discrete-choice experiments (DCEs) affects estimates of willingness-to-pay (WTP). The utility function is usually assumed to be linear in its attributes. Non-linearities, in the guise of interactions and higher-order terms, are...

We report on the results of a survey based on conjoint choice experiments that was specifically designed to investigate the effect of context on the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL), an important input into the calculation of the mortality benefits of environmental policies that reduce...

This paper reviews the environmental record of the transition countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia since the fall of the Berlin Wall, with a focus on areas of key concern to public policy at the present time. With the impacts of environment on public health being given the highest...

Guerriero and Cairns (2009) recently estimate that contaminated sites and improper waste management result in 848 excess deaths per year in the provinces of Naples and Caserta in Southern Italy, 403 of which are fatal cancers. In the absence of estimates of the Value of a Prevented Fatality...

This paper summarizes new scientific evidence supporting the hypothesis that among the many factors contributing to international development, the combination of education and health stands out as a root cause on which other dimensions of development depend. Much of this recent analysis is based...