Markets require informed participants to function efficiently. This paper examines the impact of providing targeted information directly to patients on their purchasing-decisions regarding pharmaceutical drugs. We analyze the effect of informational letters sent by a Swiss health insurer to...

The questions addressed in this paper are related to access rules to primary care services and the potential for patient driven competition between GPs and specialists. Most of the literature on the performance of primary care has dealt with reforming payment schemes, little attention being paid...

I analyze how general practitioners (GPs) indirectly affect their patients' employment outcomes by deciding on the length of sickness absences. I use an instrumental variables framework where spell durations are identified through supply-side certification measures estimated from the data. I...

I analyze how general practitioners (GPs) indirectly affect their patients' employment outcomes by deciding on the length of sickness absences. I use an instrumental variables framework where spell durations are identified through supply-side certification measures estimated from the data. I...

This paper provides a structural analysis of the role of job vacancy referrals (VRs) by public employment agencies in the job search behavior of unemployed individuals, incorporating institutional features of the monitoring of search behavior by the agencies. Notably, rejections of VRs may lead...

Can activation requirements control moral hazard problems in public sickness absence insurance and accelerate recovery? Based on empirical analysis of Norwegian data, we show that it can. Activation requirements not only bring down benefit claims, they also reduce the likelihood that long-term...

Using both household and linked-employer-employee data we study the effects of works councils on individual sickness absence rates and a subjective measure of personnel problems due to absenteeism in Germany. We find that the existence of a works council is positively correlated with the...