We analysed the relative importance of individual versus institutional factors in explaining variations in the utilisation of physician services among the 50+ in ten European countries. The importance of the latter was investigated, distinguishing between organisational (explicit) and cultural...

Several past studies have found health risk to be negatively correlated with the probability of voluntary health insurance. This is contrary to what one would expect from standard textbook models of adverse selection and moral hazard. The two most common explanations to the counter-intuitive...

A number of behaviours influence health in a non-monotonic way. Physical activity and alcohol consumption, for instance, may be beneficial to one’s health in moderate but detrimental in large quantities. We develop a demand-for-health framework that incorporates the feature of a...

People differ in their ability to produce health investments and in their capacity to benefit from such efforts. In this paper, we assume (1) that the individual’s health-investment production function exhibits diminishing returns to scale and (2) that the individual’s capacity to benefit...

This paper develops a theoretical model of the family as producer of health- and social capital. There are both direct and indirect returns on the production and accumulation of health- and social capital. Direct returns (the consumption motives) result since health and social capital both...

For the purpose of studying the consequences of the ageing of the Swedish population a group of scientists have enlarged the microsimulation model SESIM - originally developed at the Swedish Ministry of Finance - with modules that simulate health status, take up of sickness benefits, retirement,...