Our paper empirically examines how the decision to purchase private insurance and hospitalization are made based on household income, socio-demographic factors, and private health insurance factors in both Japan and the USA. Using these two data-sets, we found some similarities and...

This paper is concerned with the economics of mental health. We argue that mental health economics is like health economics only more so: uncertainty and variation in treatments are greater; the assumption of patient self-interested behavior is more dubious; response to financial incentives such...

I model how customers with limited attention choose among health plans. The model predicts people to overweight the premium in their decision and thus underappreciate the value of health insurance. This creates incentives for insurance companies to reduce quality and to hide these shortcomings...

Background: Economic evaluation (EE) is a dynamically advancing knowledge area of health economics. It has been conceived to provide evidence for allocating scarce resources to gain the best value for money. The problem of efficiency of investments becomes even more crucial with advances in...

This paper compares the cost and quality incentive effects of cost reimbursement and prospective payment systems in the health industry when providers are altruistic. Providers' behavioral rule is governed by a desire to maximize a weighted sum of profit and consumers' health benefit. When...

The aim of the paper is to present new evidence on the relationship between income and health care expenditure allowing for (i) substitution and complementary relationships between private and public health care expenditure, (ii) presence of structural breaks in the dependent variables, and...

We develop a stylized principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection to provide a unified framework for understanding some of the most salient features of the recent physician payment reform in Ontario and its impact on physician behavior. These features include: (1) physicians...

We develop a stylized principal-agent model with moral hazard and adverse selection to provide a unified framework for understanding some of the most salient features of the recent physician payment reform in Ontario and its impact on physician behavior. These features include: (1) physicians...

Health insurance is once again on the policy agenda, and it is déjà vu all over again. There are the same statistics and anecdotes about the uninsured. There are the same reports by government agencies, think tanks, and do-gooder organizations. There are the same policy entrepreneurs, pushing...