We analyze the eff ect of job insecurity on psychological health. We extend the group of people being aff ected to employees who have insecure jobs to account for a broader measure of the mental health consequences of potential unemployment. Using panel data with staff reductions in the company...

In contrast to conventional model selection criteria, the Focused Information Criterion (FIC) allows for purpose-specifi c choice of models. This accommodates the idea that one kind of model might be highly appropriate for inferences on a particular parameter, but not for another. Ever since its...

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...

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 diff erent points in time, which provides important intra-country regional variation that can be exploited to identify the eff ects...

The interdependence of labor market conditions and the demand for health care has been addressed by several theoretical and empirical analyses. We contribute to the debate by empirically examining the eff ect of a decrease in self-perceived job security on health care utilization. That is,...

This paper addresses the question of whether the effect of parental drinking on children’s later consumption of alcohol – which is frequently found to be of positive sign – exhibits a certain pattern of heterogeneity. In particular, if this eff ect is more prominent in the upper tail than...

The inefficiency of health care provision presents a major health policy concern in Germany. In order to address the issue of efficiency comprehensively – i.e. at the level of the entire system of health care provision rather than individual service providers – empirical analyses are often...

This analysis shows that multivariate generalizations to the classical Heckman (1976 and 1979) two-step estimator that account for cross-equation correlation and use the inverse Mills ratio as a correction-term are consistent only if certain restrictions apply to the true error-covariance...

This paper attempts to predict the potential effects of CO2 emissions trading on fuel choice in the German electric power industry. By analyzing panel data (1968–1998) of major utilities, we show that the fuel mix of electric utilities is price inelastic. As a consequence, the implementation...