Recent work has clarified the welfare implications of the application of cost-effectiveness analysis to the allocation of health care. Although cost-effectiveness analysis shares many similarities with cost-benefit analysis, it did not develop as an outgrowth of neoclassical welfare economics....

This paper discusses theoretical and empirical findings concerning insurance reimbursement of patients or providers by insurers operating in private markets or in mixed public and private systems. Most insurances other than health insurance do not "reimburse"; instead they pay cash to insureds...

This chapter provides an overview of normative analysis in the health sector in recent decades. It surveys two distinct, but related, literatures. The first is normative analysis of the operation of health care and health care insurance markets, market failure, and the scope for non-market...

This chapter contains a detailed treatment of the human capital model of the demand for health which was originally developed in 1972. Theoretical predictions are discussed, and theoretical extensions of the model are reviewed. Empirical research that tests the predictions of the model or...

The purpose of this chapter is to review dental economics in three major areas: (i) demand for and utilisation of dental care, (ii) productivity, technical efficiency and economies of scale in dental care production, and finally (iii) economic evaluation of dental care procedures and programmes....

Incomplete information issues pervade health care markets, with market participants often having relatively little information, and their behavior exhibiting corresponding aberrations from classic market behavior.Consumers often have relatively little information about prices and quality offered...

In this chapter we review issues relating to antitrust and competition in health care markets. The chapter begins with a brief review of antitrust legislation. We then discuss whether and how health care is different from other industries in ways that might affect the optimality of competition....

Excess drinking is associated with lost productivity, accidents, disability, early death, crime, neglect of family responsibilities, and personality deterioration. These and related concerns have justified special restrictions on alcoholic-beverage commerce and consumption. The nature and extent...

By 1993, over 70% of all Americans with health insurance were enrolled in some form of managed care plan. The term managed care encompasses a diverse array of institutional arrangements, which combine various sets of mechanisms, that, in turn, have changed over time. The chapter reviews these...

Physicians are traditionally liable under a negligence rule of liability. Economic analysis of liability rules, including malpractice, assumes that the primary function of liability is injury prevention (deterrence). Compensation can be provided more efficiently through other forms of social or...