We study patient mobility in the Italian National Health System, using patient-episode level data on elective Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty procedures over the years 2008-2011. We examine how patients' choice of the hospital is affected by changes in waiting times and clinical...

This paper seeks to advance the multilevel approach to studying childhood obesity by focusing on the "macro" level of corporations in the global economy. We use a global value chains (GVC) framework to explain how the structure of food and agricultural value chains, with an emphasis on the...

Regulators around the world are attempting to reconcile the changing demands of 21st century economies with the insights two schools of thought, New Governance and Behavioural Economics, are offering. The common emerging theme, expressed by the UK and American administrations as well as in other...

The study examines the effect of a dental-care reform for children in Israel on the use of dental care and intra-household allocation of dental treatments. Using seven-year administrative panel data on patients' dental treatments at a large clinic in Jerusalem that serves one of the target...

A version of the Becker-Lancaster characteristics model featuring quality-quantity trade offs reveals a number of surprising market behaviors that can result from price regulations that are imposed on competitive markets for products that have adjustable non-price attributes. Quality need not...

Markov-based and discrete event simulation models are widely used in health economic analysis to estimate the long term effects of treatment on clinical and economic outcomes. However, none of them simultaneously integrate patients' economic resources and their medical decision making in the...

Millions Saved (2016) is a new edition of detailed case studies on the attributable impact of global health programs at scale. As an input to the book, this paper provides an independent assessment of the cost-effectiveness of a selection of the cases using ex post information from impact...

A major reason behind crowding in emergency departments (ED) is non-urgent patients' visits to ED. In this paper we investigate how non-urgent ED visits are influenced by patients' imperfect perception of their urgency and their self-interested choice, and we explore interventions that can...

In medicine, the "ochlocratic trap"—a tendency to conform to majority views irrespective of their ethical implications—can significantly impede moral progress. This paper explores parallels between medical ethics and science, advocating a scientific approach toward ethical decision-making....

We show that children who are born at or just before the weekend are less likely to be breastfed, owing to poorer breastfeeding support services in hospitals at weekends. We use this variation to estimate the effect of breastfeeding on children's development in the first five years of life, for...