The possibility of reoccurring waves of the novel coronavirus that triggered the 2020 pandemic makes it critical to identify underlying policy-relevant factors that could be leveraged to decrease future COVID-19 death rates. We examined variation in a number of underlying, policy-relevant,...

The context of community-based interventions presents formidable problems for any evaluation analysis. Group-randomized studies do possess ideal properties in theory, but in practice, grouprandomization might not be a feasible alternative at all or group-randomized studies might be contaminated....

Dieser Aufsatz stellt die entscheidungstheoretischen Grundlagen der Produktion von Gesundheitsleistungen dar und leitet daraus Schlussfolgerungen für die Gesundheitspolitik ab. Die bedeutendste Herausforderung am Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts liegt darin, die Diffusion neuen medizinischen Wissens...

This paper discusses alternative incentive mechanisms for encouraging pharmaceutical innovations that support global health policy priorities. Patent buyouts, in which a public fund pays a mark-up on private valuations from sealed-bid second-price auctions, would boost the efficiency of research...

This paper exploits a new source of variation in Head Start funding to identify the program's effects on health and schooling. In 1965 the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) provided technical assistance to the 300 poorest counties to develop Head Start proposals. The result was a large and...

The program evaluation literature for population and health policies is in flux, with many disciplines documenting biological and behavioral linkages from fetal development to late life mortality, chronic disease, and disability, though their implications for policy remain uncertain. Both macro-...

This paper reviews the extent to which policy interventions can affect risky behaviours such as smoking, drinking and diet. The justification for such intervention is typically a market failure, broadly defined. The types of market failure typically encountered are discussed. First and second...

Substitution policies are strategies sometimes chosen in Sub-Saharan Africa for curtailing the shortage of health professionals especially caused by the outflow of medical personnel. The aim of our contribution is to propose a way to assess the merits and drawbacks of substitution policies by...

This paper develops a simple analytical framework in which optimal health and retirement policies amid population aging can be discussed. To be efficient, these policies must recognize and exploit the dynamic complementarities between the timing of retirement, the size of lifecycle labour income...

Dieser Aufsatz bietet einen einführenden Überblick zur globalen Gesundheitsökonomie – unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Allokation von Ressourcen, der Messung medizinischer Ergebnisse und der Bestimmungsgründe internationaler Variation. Daran anschließend werden gesundheitspolitische...