This paper investigates whether new health information aff ects smoking behavior. Interpreting three distinct categories of health events as different information, the paper also tests whether behavioral change depends on the type of information received. Based on retrospectively reported data...

Explaining individual, regional, and provider variation in health care spending is of enormous value to policymakers, but is often hampered by the lack of individual level detail in universal public health systems because budgeted spending is often not attributable to specific individuals. Even...

Several contributions to the literature have shown that the perception of the individual employment status depends on the surrounding unemployment rate. We argue that expectations are a possible link between unemployment rates and the individual employment status regarding changes in mental...

While risk selection within the German public health insurance system has received considerable attention, risk selection between public and private health insurers has largely been ignored. This is surprising since - given the institutional structure - risk selection between systems is likely...

The economic crisis that started in 2008 has had a profound impact on the lives of citizens. Millions of people lost their job, saw their life-savings disappear and experienced prolonged financial hardship. The economic crisis has also led a number of OECD governments to introduce austerity...

We examine the economic and social determinants of suicide mortality in a panel of 25 OECD countries over the period 1970 - 2011 and explicitly analyze the effects of unemployment and labor market institutions on suicide rates. In line with a large body of literature, our results suggest that...

According to Baumol (1993) health care epitomises Baumol's cost disease. Sectors that suffer from Baumol's cost disease are characterised by slow productivity growth due to a high labour coefficient. As a result, unit costs of these sectors rise inexorably if the respective wages increase with...

This paper examines the relationship between health aid and infant mortality, using data from in total 135 countries (for the purposes of this study, developing countries), between 1975 and 2010. Utilizing both conventional Instrumental Variable and System GMM approaches, a tentative conclusion...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of reference-dependent effects of unemployment on mental health. I show that the negative effect of unemployment on mental health depends on expectations about the future employment status. Several contributions to the literature have shown that the...