Quality report cards addressing information asymmetry in the health care market have become a popular strategy used by policymakers to improve the quality of care for elderly. Using individual level data from the largest German sickness fund merged with institutional level data, we examine the...

This paper addresses the question whether patients have a higher risk of death if they are admitted to a hospital during the night rather than during the day. Since hospital resources are reduced at nights, night admissions might be more dangerous. The empirical analysis is based on matching....

Wir betrachten die regionale Versorgungssituation mit Hausärzt:innen im Bundesland Brandenburg und nutzen dazu zwei unterschiedliche Messansätze. Zum einen betrachten wir in Anlehnung an die Versorgungsforschung zu anderen Bereichen der Daseinsvorsorge die Reisezeit zum bzw. zur nächsten...

The German health care reform of 2004 imposes a charge of 10 Euro for the first visit to a doctor in each quarter of the year. Exploiting random variation in the interview day of the German Socio-Economic Panel, this study finds a substantial effect of the new fee on the probability of visiting...

Debate over the effects of public versus private health care financing has been, and continues to be, active in both academic outlets and policy circles. Theoretical literature on parallel health care financing is often built on untested behavioural assumptions and the empirical evidence...

We analyse the effect of a change in the remuneration system for physicians on the lengths of treatments of patients as measured by the number of doctor visits using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 1988- 2003. In particular, we analyse the introduction of a fixed budget...

This paper investigates competition between health care insurance companies under different funding regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find...

On the basis of the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement (SHARE), we analyse the determinants of who engages in mammography screening focusing on European women aged 50-69 years. A special emphasis is put on the endogeneity of subjective life expectancy and on the measurement and impact of...

This paper studies externalities of nationally determined cost-sharing systems, in particular coinsurance rates (patients pay a percentage of the price), under pharmaceutical parallel trade, i.e. trade outside the manufacturer's authorized distribution channel, in a two-country model with a...

Since 2003/2004, German hospitals are reimbursed based on a prospective payment scheme (diagnosis related groups, DRGs). Patient classification in neonatology is based inter alia on birth weight, with substantial discontinuities in reimbursement at the relevant thresholds. These discontinuities...