UK Local Authorities purchase care home places on behalf of a large group of people following a means test of their income and wealth. All other buyers of care home services are atomistic. The care home market is characterised by a large number of small providers. Local authorities may thus have...

We solve for the optimal mechanism for selling two goods when the buyer's demand characteristics are unobservable. In the case of substitutable goods, the seller has an incentive to offer lotteries over goods in order to charge the buyers with large differences in the valuations a higher price...

Quality report cards addressing information asymmetry in the health care market have become a popular strategy used by policymakers to improve the quality of care for elderly. Using individual level data from the largest German sickness fund merged with institutional level data, we examine the...

This paper considers the influence of patients' characteristics on their evaluation of a health system's responsiveness, that is, a system's ability to respond to the legitimate expectations of potential users regarding non-health enhancing aspects of care (Valentine et al. 2003a). Since...

The release of the World Health Report 2000 has brought to the fore the concept of responsiveness as an indicator of health system performance. Responsiveness relates to a system's ability to respond to the legitimate expectations of potential users about non-health enhancing aspects of care...

Several studies of health system responsiveness focus on the demand-side by investigating the association between socio-demographic characteristics of patients and their reported level of responsiveness. However, little is known about the influence of supply-side factors. This paper addresses...

This WTO working paper studies availability and affordability of new and innovative pharmaceuticals in a post-TRIPS era. The WTO's TRIPS Agreement (TRIPS) makes it obligatory for WTO members − except least-developed country members (LDCs) - to provide pharmaceutical product patents with a...

The proper prescription of medicines by specialists from healthcare, especially physicians, it’s a major challenge of the healthcare services concerning the financial implications respectively the effects upon the patient's health status. The assurance of a proper and adequate prescription for...

This paper investigated the delivery of health services based on data recorded at two medium-sized hospitals: Erenkoy Mental Health Research and Training Hospital located in Istanbul/Turkey and LVR-Klinik Viersen in Germany. A comparison of quality management systems in terms of certification...

Die Gesundheitssysteme stehen weltweit zur Diskussion. Kann internationales Benchmarking ganzer Gesundheitssysteme dazu beitragen, Lösungen für deren Probleme zu finden? Diese Arbeit stellt drei aktuelle Ansätze solcher Vergleiche vor. Hierbei werden die Erkenntnisse ebenso erläutert wie die...