The importance of the physician-patient relationship for the health care market is beyond controversy. Recent work emphasizes a two-sided asymmetric information relationship between physician and patient. In contrast to most work looking only at the physician's perspective, our paper...

Introduction: Self-assessed health (SAH) is a frequently used measure of individuals’ health status. It is also prone to reporting heterogeneity. To control for reporting heterogeneity objective measures of true health need to be included in an analysis. The topic becomes even more complex for...

Self-assessed health (SAH) is a frequently used measure of individuals’ health status. It is also prone to reporting heterogeneity. To control for reporting heterogeneity valid measures of the objective health status are needed. The topic becomes even more complex for cross-country...

For empirical analysis and policy-oriented recommendation, the precise measurement of individual health or well-being is essential. The problem with variables based on questionnaires such as self-assessed health is that the answer may depend on individual reporting behaviour. Moreover, if...

The economic costs of chronic health conditions and severe illnesses like diabetes, coronary heart disease or cancer are immense. Several clinical trials give information about the impor-tance of individual behaviour for the prevalence of these illnesses. Changes in health relevant behaviour may...