Given rising pharmaceutical expenditures and the widespread use of reference pricing as a costcontainment instrument abroad, we systematically reviewed the evidence evaluating reference pricing policies. We performed a structured electronic search of peer-reviewed journals for studies published before that reported on the effects of reference pricing policies on medication use, payer and patien...

Utilization review (UR) has become a prominent approach to cost containment now used by almost 65% of private group insurance plans. Although insurers have increasingly relied on UR to contain health care costs, until recently little was known about the effects of this cost containment approach. This article reviews some of the key findings of a UR evaluation, based on analysis of claims data o...

Measurement errors are often correlated, as in surveys where respondent’s biases or tendencies to err affect multiple reported variables. We extend Schennach (2007) to identify moments of the conditional distribution of a true Y given a true X when both are measured with error, the measurement errors in Y and X are correlated, and the true unknown model of Y given X has nonseparable model error...

Savings and Prize-Linked Savings Accounts Many households have insufficient savings to handle moderate and routine consumption shocks. Many of these financially fragile households also have the highest lottery expenditures as a proportion of income. This combination suggests that Prize-Linked Savings (PLS) accounts, that combine principal-security with lottery-type jackpots, can increase saving...

We introduce endogenous directed technical change into numerical integrated climate and development policy assessment. We distinguish expenditures on innovation (R&D) and imitation (international technology spillovers) and consider the role of capital investment in creating and implementing new technologies. Our main contribution is to calibrate and numerically solve the model and to examine th...

OBJECTIVE To determine the cost of rotavirus and all-cause diarrhoea in Vellore, India. METHODS Parents of children <5 years of age accessing clinics, emergency rooms, or hospitals for acute diarrhoea completed a questionnaire detailing healthcare utilisation, medical and non-medical expenditures, and lost income. Faecal samples were screened for rotavirus and medical records were examined. C...

This part of the report presents the results of an analysis of the responsiveness of home consumption of a variety of foods to variations in incomes and prices over the period 1988 to 2000. It provides information on the way in which food expenditures and quantities vary with income across households and through time; as well as on the way in which they vary through time with prices, controllin...

OBJECTIVE To test whether alcohol advertising expenditures and the degree of exposure to alcohol advertisements affect alcohol consumption by youth. DESIGN Longitudinal panel using telephone surveys. SETTING Households in 24 US media markets, April 1999 to February 2001. PARTICIPANTS Individuals aged 15 to 26 years were randomly sampled within households and households within media market...

BACKGROUND Consumption of sugar causes tooth decay, overweight and obesity related morbidities. This paper in response to the Minister of Health's request, provides estimates of the mortality, morbidity and health care costs attributable to sugar consumption in Israel along with the effects of reducing sugar consumption. METHODS Gender specific relative risks of many diseases from overweight ...