We study risk-aversion and prudence in medical treatment decisions. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate the frequency and intensity of second- and third-order risk preferences, as well as the effect of the medical decision context. Risk preferences are assessed through treatment...

In this paper, we investigated the post-acquisition effects of privatization on hospital performance in Germany. Our findings show that there was a significant positive impact of privatization on hospital performance. Private for-profit privatizations, in particular, outperformed hospitals...

In this paper, we investigate the causal effect of years of schooling on health and health-related behavior in West Germany. We apply an instrumental variables approach using changes in compulsory schooling laws which took place from 1949 to 1969 as natural experiments. These law changed...

While risk selection within the German public health insurance system has received considerable attention, risk selection between public and private health insurers has largely been ignored. This is surprising since - given the institutional structure - risk selection between systems is likely...

Closely following recent innovations in the literature on the multidimensional measurement of poverty, this paper provides similar measures for the top of the distribution using a dual cutoff method to identify persons, who can be considered as rich in a multidimensional setting. Thereby, the...

Economic theory stresses the importance of adverse selection in competitive insurance markets. The empirical evidence for adverse selection in different health-related insurance markets, however, is mixed. This study evaluates whether different degrees of private information left after different...

The Demographic and Health Surveys from Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Malawi reveal that a significant proportion of HIV infections in adolescent women occurred in women who claim to be virgin. Two possible conclusions arise from this observation: adolescent women misreport sexual status or non-sexual...

Exploiting DHS data from 235 regions in 29 Sub-Saharan Africa countries, we find that the combination of low levels of malnutrition together with dramatically high rates of mortality, encountered in Kenya's Lake Victoria territory, is unique for Sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the causes...

Institutions are a major factor explaining development outcomes. This study focuses on social institutions related to gender inequality understood as long-lasting norms, values and codes of conduct that shape gender roles, and presents evidence on why they matter for development. We derive...