Can societies be nudged to adopt beneficial behaviors? Publicizing how people behave on average-descriptive-norms nudging-has emerged as a key tool for increasing the adoption of desirable behaviors. While nudging, by describing social norms, has proven effective in one-shot interventions in...

We study the design of optimal (private and/or social) insurance schemes for formal home care and institutional care. We consider a three period model. Individuals are either in good health, lightly dependent or heavily dependent. Lightly dependent individuals can buy formal home care which...

We analyze the impact of different designs of COVID-19 related lockdown policies on economic loss and mortality using a micro-level simulation model, which combines a multisectoral closed economy with an epidemic transmission model. In particular, the model captures explicitly the (stochastic)...

Health care markets often lack a market force because the presence of health insurance undermines price signals. Patients have little incentive to shop for low-priced alternatives because they do not bear the full cost of their health care consumption. In turn, producers lack incentives to...

In most developed countries drugs are dispensed to patients through physicians and pharmacists. This paper studies the effects of allowing doctors to directly dispense drugs to patients (self-dispensation) on pharmaceutical coverage. We use a Swiss dataset in our empirical analysis because...

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has affected all states and union territories in India, but the spread of infections and the fatality rate across regions have been disproportionate. In this study, inequalities in the severity of the pandemic are examined for a 15-month period,...

Steuern auf ungesunde Lebensmittel, zum Beispiel zuckergesüßte Getränke, sollen Verbraucher*innen einen Anreiz geben, sich gesünder zu ernähren. Im Fokus dieser Politik stehen besonders Menschen mit niedriger Selbstkontrolle, die ihren Zuckerkonsum weniger unter Kontrolle haben. Dieser...

Exploiting future exposure to job termination in the UK, this paper finds that sharply increased job loss expectations before job termination significantly increase mental distress. This anticipation effect is largest in tight labor markets but does not spill over within couples. In contrast,...

We study the design of nonlinear reimbursement rules for expenses on secondary preventive and on therapeutic care. With some probability individuals are healthy and do not need any therapeutic health care. Otherwise they become ill and the severity of their disease is realized and identifies...

We examine the efficiency gains in health systems generated after the national roll out of basic healthcare in El Salvador between 2010 and 2013. Using data from over 120 million consultations and five million hospitalizations, we demonstrate that the expansion of community health teams,...