This paper investigates physician altruism toward patients’ health benefit using behavioral data from the fully incentivized laboratory experiment of Hennig-Schmidt et al. (2011). This setup identifies both physicians’ profits and patients’ health benefit resulting from medical treatment...

Background: Health care systems in many countries are characterized by limited availability of provider performance data that can be used to design and implement welfare improving reforms in the health sector. We question whether a simple mystery shopper scheme can be an effective measure to...

Background: Health care systems in many countries are characterized by limited availability of provider performance data that can be used to design and implement welfare improving reforms in the health sector. We question whether a simple mystery shopper scheme can be an effective measure to...

This paper investigates physician altruism toward patients’ health benefit using behavioral data from Hennig-Schmidt et al.'s (2011) laboratory experiment. In the experiment, medical students in the role of physicians decide on the provision of medical services. The experimental setup allows...

We study gatekeeping physicians’ referrals of patients to specialty care. We derive theoretical results when competition in the physician market intensifies. First, due to competitive pressure, physicians refer patients to specialty care more often. Second, physicians earn more by treating...

In a period where decentralisation seemed to be the prominent trend, Norway in 2002 chose to re-centralise the hospital sector. The reform had three main aims; cost control, efficiency and reduced waiting times. This study investigates whether the hospital reform has improved hospital...

Ved hjelp av dataomhyllingsanalyse (DEA) beregnes utviklingen i produktivitet i de fire nordiske landene for perioden 1999 til 2004. Dernest analyseres effekten av sykehusreformen på produktiviteten i Norge ved hjelp av en regresjonsanalyse. Datamaterialet består av til sammen 729...

From 2002 the Norwegian hospital sector is to be transferred from county to state ownership, organised through regional semiautonomous companies. A major motivation for the reform is to allow for more specialised hospital production. If there are economies or diseconomies of scope, the...