As in most industries, in health care, information is a competitive asset, and we expect that health care providers may have incentive to protect their information from competitors. This study aims to understand how this incentive to protect information may be a barrier to the development of a...

We investigate the density of private physicians in a two-tiered health care system, i.e., one with co-existing public and private health care providers. In particular, we analyze how the densities of private and public suppliers of outpatient health care (general practitioners and specialists)...

Empirical evidence from U.S. studies suggests that female physicians earn less than their male counterparts, on average. The earnings gap does not disappear when individual and market characteristics are controlled for. This paper investigates whether a gender earnings difference can also be...

In this paper we concentrate on the question whether the financing structure of the health care systems converges. In a world of increasing economic integration convergence in health care financing (HCF) and, hence, decreasing differences in HCF across countries enhance individuals' (labour)...

In recent years, several countries have introduced non-monetary performance incentives for health care providers to improve the quality of medical care. Evidence on the effect of non-monetary feedback incentives, predominantly in the form of public quality reporting, on the quality of medical...

Der doppelte Alterungsprozess, der medizinisch-technische Fortschritt und die Pflegeleistungsdynamisierung bilden die wesentlichen Bestimmungsfaktoren für die Finanzierungsschwierigkeiten der GKV und GPV. So sind effektive Reformkonzepte nur auf der Ausgabenseite anzusetzen. Entsprechende...

The introduction of hospital reimbursement based on diagnosis related groups (DRG) in 2004 has been a conspicuous attempt to increase hospital efficiency in the German health sector. In this paper changes of hospital efficiency, quantified as a Malmquist index decomposition in pure technical...

A nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is performed on hospitals in the federal state of Saxony (Germany) and in Switzerland. This study is of interest from three points of view. First, contrary to most existing work, patient days are not treated as an output but as an input. Second,...

This paper investigates competition between health insurance companies under different financing regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find that...