Background: Global spending on health was continuing to rise over the past 20 years. To reduce the growth rates, alleviate information asymmetry, and improve the efciency of healthcare markets, global health systems have initiated price and quality transparency tools in the hospital industry in...

Quality competition among hospitals, induced by patients freely choosing their hospital in a price regulated market, can only be realized if quality differences between hospitals are transparent, understandable, and thus influence patients' hospital choice. We use data from ~145,000 German...

Healthcare utilization varies widely between regions. Yet, the causes of regional variation are still not well understood, and they can also differ between countries and institutional settings. We exploit patient migration to examine which share of regional variation in ambulatory care use in...

Geographic variation in healthcare utilization has raised concerns of possible inefficiencies in healthcare supply, as differences are often not reflected in health outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian microdata, we exploit cross-region migration to analyze regional variation in healthcare...

The COVID–19 pandemic has challenged the capacity of healthcare systems around the world and can potentially compromise healthcare utilization and health outcomes among non-COVID–19 patients. Using monthly panel data of nationally representative middle-aged and older Singaporeans, we...

How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of...

The OPEC countries rely on oil to fund their budgets, similar to many countries worldwide. However, the fall in oil prices in 2008 and 2014 put significant strain on their public finances, including healthcare finances. This study examines the effect of the fall in oil prices on OPEC countries'...

The article shows the relationships between the COVID and non-COVID deaths during the first year of the pandemic, compared with the stringency of restrictions imposed and the compulsory spending on healthcare. We compare these relationships among European countries, analysing weekly data and...