In this paper we concentrate on the question whether the financing structure of the health care systems converges. In a world of increasing economic integration convergence in health care financing (HCF) and, hence, decreasing differences in HCF across countries enhance individuals' (labour)...

This paper examines the influence of implicit information on willingness to pay (WTP) values for prevention of the risk of dying in an avalanche. We present the results of a contingent valuation (CV) study carried out in Austria in two different periods (fall 2004 and winter 2005). The...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the relationship between environmental regulation and firm behavior. In particular, we ask whether and how strongly investment decisions of firms respond to stringency in environmental regulation. Environmental stringency is measured as (i)...

It is still an ongoing discussion whether benefits resulting from reduced mortality risk should be valuated differently, depending on the age of the beneficiaries. Theory suggests that the influence of age on the value of statistical life (VSL), which is a monetary measure for reduced/prevented...

Sensitivity (proportionality) of willingness to pay to (small) risk changes is often used as a criterion to test for valid measures of economic preferences. In a contingent valuation (CV) study conducted in Austria, 1,005 respondents were asked their willingness to pay (WTP) for preventing an...

This paper discusses the problem of crowding out of insurance by co-existing governmental relief programs - so-called 'charity hazard' - in a context of different institutional schemes of governmental relief in Austria and Germany. We test empirically whether an assured partial relief scheme (as...

Research suggests that a donor country?s decision to provide post-disaster assistance is not only driven by the severity of a disaster and the resulting humanitarian needs in the recipient country but also by strategic considerations. We argue that the identification of the determinants of the...

This paper tests some existing theories developed over the past 25 years on corporate demand for insurance. Using a unique dataset of 1,809 large U.S. corporations it provides the first empirical analysis that compares corporate demand for standard property insurance and for catastrophe coverage...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the role of intergovernmental relations on a country's effort to enforce the objectives of an international environmental agreement on an open access resource. Intergovernmental interaction allows signatory countries to observe compliance behavior of...

Within the last decades an increasing number of people practice risky sports in their leisure time. Although there exists a vast number of economic literature on risk-taking behavior, an estimation of the individual willingness to pay (WTP) for the option to exercise risk-taking is missing....