In many countries, social health insurance systems are being reformed in favor of more competition among insurers, while premiums are community rated by regulation. The implicit incentives for insurers to engage in risk selection can only be curtailed using appropriate systems of risk-adjusted...

In the expected-utility theory of the monetary value of a statistical life, the so-called “dead-anyway” effect discovered by Pratt and Zeckhauser (1996) asserts that an individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for small reductions in mortality risk increases with the initial level of risk....

In dieser Arbeit wird der verbreitete Irrtum korrigiert, die hohe Arbeitslosigkeit unter den Geringqualifizierten werde dadurch verursacht, dass die Höhe der Sozialhilfe einen Anspruchs- oder Mindestlohn darstelle. In einem mikroökonomischen Modell des Arbeitsangebots wird gezeigt, wie der...

We report results of a survey of a representative sample of the German population in which respondents were asked in various scenarios for their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a gain of one quality-adjusted life year. While one version of the survey exactly copied the setting (online survey) and...

In several OECD countries, public pay-as-you-go pension systems have undergone major reforms in which future retirement benefit promises have been scaled down. A consequence of these reforms is that, especially in countries with a tight tax - benefit linkage, the retirement benefit claims of...

It is still an open question whether increasing life expectancy as such is causing higher health care expenditures (HCE). According to the “red-herring”-hypothesis, the positive correlation between age and HCE is exclusively due to the fact that mortality rises with age and a large share of...