There has been a huge interest during the last decade on modelling hospital cost. Now that there is a fare amount of clarity achieved in estimating cost functions of hospitals, it is time to take stock of the existing methodologies. This article through a brief review of the past studies...

Following the adoption of the Health Insurance Law in Bulgaria (1999), which provided the legal framework for the development of the voluntary health insurance, several health insurance funds had been established. Bulgaria had two licensed voluntary health insurance funds in 2001; in 2003 their...

The paper is concerned with the efficient organization of contractual relationships between health insurers and providers. An introduction to relevant aspects of contract theory is followed by their adaptation to the characteristics of the health care system. The focus lies on an ex ante...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the employee’s perceptions of the impact, of Total Quality Management (TQM), on their roles within the organization and how they perceived the effectiveness of the quality processes in Pakistan Pharmaceutical industry. The universe of this study was the...

Japanese prefecture level panel data for the period 1986–2003 was used to analyze and compare the determinants of teenage body mass index (BMI) by sex. Major findings through random effects estimation were as follows: (1) BMI consistently increased during the period in males aged 10–16 and...

This paper using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) evaluates the performance of public health services of the Greek prefectures. The efficiency levels of the Greek prefectures are compared and analyzed in a regional context. With the use of bootstrap techniques and conditional full frontier...

We study the exit of hospitals from the market for inpatient services. More generous hospital reimbursement significantly reduces the probability of exit throughout the 1990s. Conditional on reimbursement levels, hospital efficiency was not a significant determinant in the early 1990s but in the...

This paper explores the interactions between the risk of food insecurity and the decision to health insure in the Palestinian Territories. The risk of adverse health conditions is insurable; the risk of food insecurity is a background risk and no market insurance exists. The vulnerability to food...

Organic products seeped into the mainstream of the Indian market from decades with regeneration and shedding insight on sustainable food production. Presently customers typically understand the credentials of organic living, shell out to pay a premium for these products. But the negative...

Stress tests of financial institutions are becoming more common in the midst of a global recession and unpredictable future economic growth. We believe that apart from banks, stress tests can be conducted on hospitals as well and will have their merit. The proposed methodology for risk...