In this article, we analyse the optimal investment decision in a new health care technology of a representative hospital that maximises its surplus in an uncertain environment. The new technology allows the hospital to increase the quality level of the care provided, but the investment is...

Patient mobility is a key issue in the EU who recently passed a new law on patients’ right to EU-wide provider choice. In this paper we use a Hotelling model with two regions that differ in technology to study the impact of patient mobility on health care quality, health care financing and...

In economic perspective, the agency relationship between a patient and his physician has dramatically changed in the past years and is still evolving. Great emphasis is now placed on communication issues. The debate on the amount and precision of information on his health status the patient...

We analyse a model of patient decision-making where anxiety about the future characterizes the patient's utility function. Anxiety corresponds to fear of bad news and results in the patient being averse to information. First, the patient chooses the accuracy of a signal which discloses...

We use a simple version of the Psychological Expected Utility Model (Caplin and Leahy, QJE, 2001) to analyze the optimal choice of information accuracy by an individual who is concerned with anticipatory feeling. The individual faces the following trade-off: on the one hand information may lead...

This article provides a possible explanation for the heterogeneity of tax reaction functions under tax competition. In particular, we assume the existence of three jurisdictions, i, j and z, as well as of spillovers. Given this simple framework, we show that if jurisdictions compete to attract...

The paper studies the incentive for providers to invest in new health care technologies under alternative payment systems, when the patients' benefits are uncertain. If the reimbursement by the purchaser includes both a variable (per patient) and a lump-sum component, efficiency can be ensured...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause about 71% of all deaths globally and a considerable increase in health care costs. To tackle this problem, several Governments have designed "sin taxes", i.e, extra payments related to the quantity of unhealthy contents of specific goods. However, unhealthy...

This paper aims to characterise a dynamic, incentive-compatible contract for the provision of health services, allowing for both moral hazard and adverse selection. Patients' severity changes over time following a stochastic process and is private information of the provider. We characterise the...

This paper analyses the decision to invest in quality by a hospital in an environment where doctors are devoted workers, i.e. they care for specific aspects of the output they produce. We assume that quality is the result of both an investment in new technology and the effort of the medical...