Payer-driven competition has been widely advocated as a means of increasing efficiency in health care markets. The 1990s reforms to the UK health service followed this path. We examine whether competition led to better outcomes for patients, as measured by death rates after treatment following...

This Paper examines the relationship between performance of English public sector hospitals (NHS trusts) and the quality of their nursing staff. Performance ratings of NHS trusts published in 2001 and 2002 indicate a clear regional divide. This divide is not explained by lower medical need. The...

In many sectors of the economy, governments either provide various services at no cost or at highly subsidized prices. Examples are the health, education and general government sectors. The System of National Accounts 1993 recommends valuing these nonmarket outputs at their costs of production...

This paper builds on Barreca et al.’s (2013) finding that over the course of the 20th century the proliferation of residential air conditioning led to a remarkable decline in mortality due to extreme temperature days in the United States. Using panel data on monthly mortality rates of...

The same methodology Oecd and Ecofin apply to project future trends of health care expenditue is here applied to reconstruct backwards Italian health care expenditure. The time horizon is 1988-2012. Results are described and argued. Important evidence emerges on the historical value of the...

The present paper is an attempt to examine the levels of deprivation of rural people in terms of their access to basic amenities like, housing, drinking water, sanitation etc. And also it evaluates the degree of relative disadvantage of rural people when compared with their urban counterparts....

This paper uses variation in victimization probabilities between individuals living in the same community to shed new light on the costs of crime. I use panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey for 2002 and 2005 and look at the impact of within-community differences in victimization risk...

The goal of this paper is to analyze changes in productivity and their relation with variations in citizens’ perceived satisfaction in the field of hospital care and specialized care in the Spanish regional health services for the period 1999-2004. To assess changes in productivity the...

El objetivo de este trabajo es analizar los cambios de productividad y su relación con las variaciones de satisfacción percibida en la atención hospitalaria y especializada de los Servicios Regionales de Salud españoles para el periodo 1999-2004. Se utilizan índices de productividad de...

Upon outbreak of a contagious animal disease, a primary motive for restoring disease-free status is often to regain access to international product markets. Efforts applied toward continuing or regaining such access is a public good-all growers benefit regardless of extent of private efforts...