Losers and Losers: Some Demographics of Medical Malpractice Tort Reforms Our research examines individual differences in the effects of medical malpractice tort reforms on pre-trial settlement speed and settlement amounts by age and most likely settlement size. Findings of note include that, unlike previously assumed, both absolute and percentage losses from tort reform are small for infants in...

Patient hospital choice reform in Norway was introduced in 2001. Waiting times for treatments at hospitals were published, and patients and their physicians were able to select hospitals for services. We develop a model of patient response, and study the empirical impact of the reform. Our data set consists of hospital admission information between 1999 and 2005, as well as hospital and area ch...

This report describes the organisation of the Belgian long-term care system. It can be characterised as a mixed system, with extensive public care provision and the substantial support of informal care provided mainly within the family. While the current volume and quality of services appears to be adequate, the future increase in the number of dependent elderly persons over the next two decade...

This paper uses annual data from 1980-1998 to test two models of the relationship between wholesale and retail marijuana prices. Results from regressions of retail prices on wholesale prices reject a multiplicative model, in which the difference in prices between levels is proportional to the wholesale price, in favor of an additive model, in which the price difference is a fixed amount. This f...

We examine whether the Colombian government’s expansion of publicly provided health insurance in the early nineties created incentives for people to become informal. Using variation in the onset of the Census of the Poor across municipalities and over time, we find robust and consistent estimates of an increase in informal employment between 2 and 5 percentage points after the expansion. As rob...

Using both household and linked employer-employee data for Germany, we assess the effects of non-union representation in the form of works councils on (1) individual sickness absence rates and (2) a subjective measure of personnel problems due to sickness absence as perceived by a firm's management. We find that the existence of a works council is positively correlated with the incidence and th...

We analyze the eff ect of job insecurity on psychological health. We extend the group of people being aff ected to employees who have insecure jobs to account for a broader measure of the mental health consequences of potential unemployment. Using panel data with staff reductions in the company as an exogenous source of job insecurity, we fi nd that an increase in fear of unemployment substanti...

This paper shows that government anti-smoking campaign can benefit the government in the political bargaining with the tobacco industry by reducing the latter's alternative welfare. Although the equilibrium regulation on the tobacco industry increases as a result of government anti-smoking campaign, the political contribution from the tobacco industry will not necessarily go down. Anti-smoking ...

This paper examines the eff ects of hospital case volume on quality of care on the example of intact abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and hip fracture (HIP). We conduct the analysis on patient level with multiple logistic regression analysis. Quality is measured with a binary variable which indicates whether the patient has died in hospital. The results show that patients who are treated in hosp...

The effect of competition on the quality of health care remains a contested issue. Most empirical estimates rely on inference from non-experimental data. In contrast, this paper exploits a procompetitive policy reform to provide estimates of the impact of competition on hospital outcomes. The English government introduced a policy in 2006 to promote competition between hospitals. Using this pol...