Using an instrumental variable design based on two powerful household-level datasets, I estimate the impact of households' credit access on their healthcare expenditure. The result shows a robust causal effect of households' constrained ability to borrow on their non-emergency medical...

The paper aims to analyse the extent to which the adoption of best practice policies could improve the efficiency of Italian Regional Healthcare Systems (RHSs) and reduce public healthcare expenditures. By means of a stochastic frontier model we estimate the RHSs’ technical inefficiency and...

In the first two quarters of 2013 the Georgian government introduced and fully implemented a universal health care (UHC) plan covering all those not-yet publicly or privately insured. We estimate the effect of the introduction of the universal healthcare plan on the level of out-of-pocket (OOP)...

This study examines the impact of gubernatorial partisanship on the growth of healthcare expenditures (HCE) for a panel dataset of 50 U.S. states over the 1991-2009 period. Using the parametric regression discontinuity design, I find no partisan effect on the growth of state's per capita real...

The paper analyzes the comparative effects of alternative health financing mechanisms on economic growth within a two-sector model with human capital. The transitional growth effects of a social insurance system are stronger than those of an out-of-pocket payment system. A private health...

Objectives: We estimated out-of-pocket health care spending and out-of-pocket spending burden ratio employing household equivalent income in the Republic of Korea. We examined variations in out-of-pocket spending, estimated out-of-pocket spending burden ratio employing household equivalent...

Consumers rarely know the price of medical care before they consume it. I use variation in the timing of access to a new source of price information to show how access to and search for price information leads consumers to pay significantly less for care. I provide suggestive evidence that...

There are inadequate consumer protections from harmful medical billing practices that result in unavoidable, unexpected, and often financially devastating medical bills. The problem stems from increasing cost shifting to patients underway in American health care and the inordinate complexity...

One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...