The paper focuses on the relationship between competition and quality in the Dutch hospital sector. We analyse the period of 2004-2008, in which a healthcare reform took place in the Netherlands, introducing competition in the healthcare sector. The increased attention to hospital quality and...

This study examines the impact of competition on hospital quality. Our panel covers all Dutch hospitals in the period 2004–2008, in which the transparency of hospital quality information increased substantially. The paper contributes to the existing literature by including both outcome and...

Whenever you phone your mother, switch on the light, or buy health insurance you purchase a service or product from a chain of vertically related industries. Providers of these products or services need access to a telecommunications network, an electricity network or to health care...

The current institutional reforms in the Dutch healthcare sector may increase the extent of vertical relations (such as vertical contracts and vertical integration) between insurers and healthcare providers. Vertical relations may have both welfare increasing and welfare reducing effects. In...

We compare the structure of the financial sectors of the EU27, Japan and the United States, looking at a set of 23 indicators. We find a large variation within the European Union in the structure of the financial sector. Using principal components analysis, we identify robust groups of EU...

The financial crisis has exposed the need to devise stronger and broader international and regional safety nets in order to deal with economic and financial shocks and allow for countries to adjust. The euro area has developed several such mechanisms over the last couple of years through a...

type="main" <p>We study optimal risk adjustment in imperfectly competitive health insurance markets when high-risk consumers are less likely to switch insurer than low-risk consumers. Insurers then have an incentive to select even if risk adjustment perfectly corrects for cost differences. To...</p>