Angesichts steigender Gesundheitsausgaben spielen Gesundheitssystemvergleiche in den letzten Jahren eine immer größere Rolle. Solche "Benchmarks" können sinnvolle Anregungen zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitssystemen darstellen. Viele Gesundheitssystemvergleiche unterstellen implizit ein...

The apparently unrelenting growth in the GDP-share of health spending (SHS) has been a perennial issue of policy concern. Does an equilibrium limit exist? The issue has been left open in recent dynamic models which take income growth and population aging as given. We view these variables as...

Governments often subsidize poorer groups in society to ensure their access to new drugs. We analyze here the optimal income-based price subsidies in a strategic environment. We show that asymmetric health systems can arise even though countries are ex-ante symmetric when international price...

In health markets, government policies tend to subsidize poorer groups. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the implications of an income-based subsidy policy on the incentives of countries to implement price arbitrage and of firms to provide market access to poorer groups.

We study the impact a redistribution of income has on the decisions of a health care innovator and the utility of consumers. We find that income redistribution from rich to poor increases the quality of the medical innovation, reduces its price and increases the utility of some of the consumers...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are currently the leading cause of death worldwide. In this paper, we examine the channels through which economic growth affects NCDs' epidemiology. Following a production function approach, we develop a basic technique to break up the impact of economic growth...

U.S. federal and state governments rarely regulate healthcare price levels, but do regulate price changes for pharmaceuticals, hospitals, and health insurance. Previous research showed that limiting price increases can raise launch prices and reduce both profit and social welfare, assuming...

This article considers an economy where risk is insurable, but selection determines the pool of individuals who take it up. First, we demonstrate that the comparative statics of these economies do not necessarily depend on its marginal selection (adverse versus favorable), but rather other...

In the linear coinsurance problem, examined first by Mossin (1968), a higher absolute risk aversion with respect to wealth in the sense of Arrow–Pratt implies a higher optimal coinsurance rate. We show that this property does not hold for health insurance under ex post moral hazard; i.e., when...

This short essay reviews Gary Becker's contributions and influence in health economics. It was originally prepared for the collection of short papers in honor of Gary Becker that is scheduled to appear in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Demographic Economics.