A copula is best described, as in Joe (1997), as a multivariate distribution function that is used to bind each marginal distribution function to form the joint. The copula parameterises the dependence between the margins, while the parameters of each marginal distribution function can be...

This paper investigates the determinants of the labour supply of nurses in the UK. Attention focuses on the elasticity of hours of work supplied with respect to wage rates. This is achieved using nine waves of data from the British Household Panel Survey. The panel nature of this survey allows...

This paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of inequality and inequity in the delivery of health care based on contributions from the literature on poverty and deprivation. This approach has some appealing characteristics: 1) inequity is additively decomposable by population subgroups;...

Measuring the performance of health systems has become a key tool in aiding decision makers to describe, analyze, compare and ultimately improve the delivery and outcomes achieved by a system. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) framework for assessing performance includes three intrinsic...

We investigate the impact of the onset of prenatal care and the quality of health services on the health of the newborn. Our specification is nonlinear and simultaneous and uses latent factors to allow for unobserved influences on onset and quality of prenatal care to affect infant’s health....

This paper proposes a new method of measuring obesity using Body Mass Index (BMI) data. Conventional measures which simply count the number of individuals with BMI in excess of an upper limit ignore the extent by which individuals exceed BMI limits and also the increased risk ratios for various...

This paper explores reporting bias and heterogeneity in the measure of self-assessed health (SAH) used in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). The ninth wave of the BHPS includes the SF-36 general health questionnaire, which incorporates a different wording to the self-assessed health...

There is a well-established debate between Heckman sample selection and two-part models in health econometrics, particularly when no obvious exclusion restrictions are available. Most of this debate has focussed on the application of these models to health care expenditure. This paper revisits...

This paper analyzes the effect of dental insurance on utilization of general dentist services by adult US population aged from 25 to 64 years. Our econometric framework accommdates endogeneity of insurance and the ordered nature of the measure of dental utilization. The study finds strong...

The Australian health system is characterised by a mix of public and private service and private health insurance is used in addition to a compulsory universal public insurance to finance health services. A series of reforms have been implemented over the years in order to expand the private...