We discuss and review literature on the macroeconomic effects of epidemics pandemics since late twentieth century. First, we cover role health in driving economic growth well-being standard frameworks for assessing burden infectious diseases. Second, sketch a general theoretical framework to evaluate trade-offs policy makers must consider when addressing diseases their repercussions. In so doin...

Early Retirement and Post Retirement Health This paper studies empirically the consequences of retirement on health. We make use of a targeted retirement offer to army employees 55 years of age or older. Before the offer was implemented in the Swedish defense, the normal retirement age was 60 years of age. Estimating the effect of the offer on individuals’ health within the age range 56-70, we ...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new variables in the German Socioeconomic Panel for the years 2002, 2004, and 2006 that measure individual h...

We analyse the fi nancial performance of small German hospitals based on balance sheet data of about 1,000 hospitals in 2007. Measures of fi nancial performance are the earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) and the probability of default (PD). We fi nd that, on average, small hospitals have more fi nancial diffi culties than large ones. However, there is conside...

Top‐Down vs. Bottom‐Up: The Long‐Term Impact of Government Ideology and Personal Experience on Values This paper studies the long‐term impact of societal socialization on values using the example of doping behavior in sports. We apply the German Reunification Approach to the microcosm of Berlin and exploit its 40‐year long division into a capitalist and a communist sector. We deliberately chose...

This paper investigates the topping-up scheme in health insurance when both public and private firms use linear contracts. First, the case with identical consumers is analyzed. The optimal public coverage is derived both when the firms play simultaneously and when they play sequentially. In the former case consumers are over-insured, whereas, in the latter case, the second-best allocation is ob...

This paper analyses the effect of local crime rates on the mental well being of residents. Our identification strategy addresses the problem of sorting, and endogenous moving behaviour. We find that crime causes considerable mental distress of residents, and that these effects are mainly driven by property crime. However, individuals react also to violent crime, in particular in areas individua...

The Economic Case for Devoting Public Resources to Health The world has enjoyed huge improvements in population health during the last half century. But major health problems persist, particularly in tropical countries, which are still struggling with infectious diseases while increasingly having to deal with noncommunicable diseases. Several classic arguments for public spending on health have...

We study the effects of 'balance billing', i.e., allowing physicians to charge a fee from patients in addition to the fee paid by Medicare. First, we show that on pure efficiency grounds the optimal Medicare fee under balance billing is zero. An active Medicare policy thus can only be justified when distributional concerns are accounted for. Extending the analysis by Glazer and McGuire, we ther...

It is commonly argued that in recent years pharmaceutical companies have directed their R&D towards small improvements of existing compounds instead of more risky drastic innovations. In this paper we show that the proliferation of these small innovations is likely to be linked to the lack of market sensitivity of a part of the demand to changes in prices. Compared to their social contribution,...