The paper focuses on the relationship between competition and quality in the Dutch hospital sector. We analyse the period of 2004-2008, in which a healthcare reform took place in the Netherlands, introducing competition in the healthcare sector. The increased attention to hospital quality and...

This study examines the impact of competition on hospital quality. Our panel covers all Dutch hospitals in the period 2004–2008, in which the transparency of hospital quality information increased substantially. The paper contributes to the existing literature by including both outcome and...

Whenever you phone your mother, switch on the light, or buy health insurance you purchase a service or product from a chain of vertically related industries. Providers of these products or services need access to a telecommunications network, an electricity network or to health care...

The current institutional reforms in the Dutch healthcare sector may increase the extent of vertical relations (such as vertical contracts and vertical integration) between insurers and healthcare providers. Vertical relations may have both welfare increasing and welfare reducing effects. In...

This chapter provides a literature overview on the use of input-output (I-O) analysis in efficiency and productivity measurements. The exposition covers both the traditional I-O modeling framework and its extension to frontier-based I-O approach that adds elements of frontier analysis into the...