This chapter reviews the literature devoted to studying markets for health care services and health insurance. There has been tremendous growth and progress in this field. A tremendous amount of new research has been done since the publication of the first volume of this Handbook. In addition,...

Due to various structural pressures predictions of retrenchment and conformity of social policies have been legion, both in terms of expenditure and institutional set-up. Recent research has focused on changes in cash benefits. Comparative analyses of changes in services, the other pillar of...

Health care is an area that remains formally outside the competence of the EU. Despite this, the union’s influence on national health care policies has increased substantially over the past decade. In a series of rulings, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) established a de facto system of...

While European health care systems are mostly public and similar the contrast is large to the US health industry based to a large extent in the market. Using competence bloc theory the industrial potential of Swedish and European health care is assessed and compared with US health industry. To...

In many health care systems primary care physicians act as 'gatekeepers' to secondary care. We investigates the impact of the UK fundholding scheme under which general practices could elect to hold a budget to meet the costs of elective surgery for their patients. We use a differences in...

Ample empirical evidence links adverse conditions during early childhood (the period from conception to age five) to worse health outcomes and lower academic achievement in adulthood. Can early-life medical care and public health interventions ameliorate these effects? Recent research suggests...

Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

Physicians are supposed to serve patients' interests, but some are more inclined to do so than others. This paper studies how the system of health care provision affects the allocation of patients to physicians when physicians differ in altruism. We show that allowing for private provision of...

We investigate the impact of early-life medical interventions on low-risk newborn health. A policy rule in The Netherlands creates large discontinuities in medical treatments at gestational week 37. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find no health benefits from additional treatments...

Excessive waiting times for elective surgery have been a long-standing concern in many national healthcare systems in the OECD. How do the hospital admission patterns that generate waiting lists affect different patients? What are the hospitals characteristics that determine waiting times? By...