<Emphasis Type="Bold">Background: Obesity is a well-known risk factor for sick leave, disability pension and premature death. Obesity is therefore presumably related to in-creased productivity losses. <Emphasis Type="Bold">Objective: The aim of this study was to estimate the lifetime productivity losses to society associated with obesity...</emphasis></emphasis>

In a period where decentralisation seemed to be the prominent trend, Norway in 2002 chose to re-centralise the hospital sector. The reform had three main aims; cost control, efficiency and reduced waiting times. This study investigates whether the hospital reform has improved hospital...

A purchaser/provider split together with output- based reimbursement were recently introduced by several Swedish county councils. These changes have been motivated by arguments of efficiency and consumer choice. This paper tests the null hypothesis that hospital services are provided as...

A separation of provider and purchaser roles - together with performance-based reimbursement - were recently introduced in several county councils, which are the local governments that provide and fund almost all health care in Sweden. These changes have been motivated by efficiency and consumer...

This paper has two purposes. The first purpose is methodological and aims to extend previous work on efficiency analysis by implementing a multiple-output stochastic ray frontier production function model. This model generalizes the single-output stochastic frontier model to multiple-input,...