This paper proposes a theoretical analysis of the private provision of care within public hospitals and assesses its impact on the quality and cost of healthcare. We also capture this policy's impact on the number of outpatients that are seen and the number that are cured. We show that the...

The for-profit hospital is in the minority numerically in all developed countries. Although the for-profits' market share has been quite stable for decades, for-profit chains have grown in share and influence in the United States. By contrast, for-profit chains have made few inroads in other...

The public-private partnership (PPP) is a trendy model in public administration. It is moved by a dynamic in which the modern welfare State steps back in favor of a strategist State whose objectives of general interest are met relying on both public and private economic sectors. In an era that...

We analyse – theoretically and empirically – the effect of hospital mergers on waiting times in healthcare markets where prices are fixed. Using a spatial modelling framework where patients choose provider based on travelling distance and waiting times, we show that the effect is...

We model competition for a multi-attribute health service where patients observe attribute quality imprecisely before deciding on a provider. High quality in one attribute, e.g. medical quality, is more important for ex post utility than high quality in the other attribute. Providers can shift...

The goal of this paper is to identify key issues concerning the nature of competition in health care markets and its impacts on quality and social welfare and to identify pertinent findings from the theoretical and empirical literature on this topic. The theoretical literature in economics on...

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,...

The present study describes and explains the changing role of the state in the Italian healthcare system since the beginning of the 1970s, with a particular focus on developments following 1978 when the healthcare system was transformed from a social insurance system into a national health...

This paper deals with the changing role of the state in the Dutch healthcare system. At the eve of the first oil crisis the Netherlands had a relatively compound healthcare system combining several characteristics of the three Western healthcare system types: National Health Service, social...