We evaluate how the productive structure and level of specialization of a hospital affect technical efficiency by analyzing a six-year panel database (2000/2005) drawn from hospital discharge records and Ministry of Health data. We adopt a distance function approach, while measuring the technical efficiency level with stochastic frontier techniques. After controlling for environmental variables...

july 2017 IZA DP No. 10917 Taking the CON out of Pennsylvania: Did Hip and Knee Replacement Patients Benefit?* Policymakers and the general public have expressed increasing concern over rising health care costs. The Certificate-of-Need (CON) programs began at the federal level in 1974 to stem the increase in costs by limiting hospital expansion and acquisition of equipment. The federal requirem...

This paper finds a strong positive correlation between female labor force participation and negative health outcomes for middle-aged men and women, and suggests that this correlation is mediated by household-level stress. At the crosscountry aggregate level, I show that labor force participation of women is associated with increased mortality rates among both men and women. At the individual le...

We test whether fi nancial incentives have an eff ect on weight reduction in a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental groups. While two treatment groups obtain €150 and €300, respectively, for achieving an individually assigned target weight within four months, a control group receives no such premium. The results indicate that the weight losses f...

We compare state-of-the-art implementation of Benefit Cost Analysis (BCA) and Cost Utility Analysis (CUA) as tools for making priorities in allocation of national public funds in the transport sector and health sector, respectively, in Sweden. While the principal distinctions between these methods are well known, less notice has been given to a number of other differences that have emerged as n...

This paper studies the relationship between crime and off-premise alcohol availability, looking at the repeal of Connecticut’s blue law banning the sale of retail alcohol on Sundays. Using detailed crime data in Hartford, I construct concentric rings around liquor stores and beer-selling grocery stores to conduct a difference-indifferences analysis and find that allowing Sunday sales increased ...

Many health improving interventions in low-income countries are extremely good value for money. So why has it often proven difficult to obtain political backing for highly cost-effective interventions such as vaccinations, treatments against diarrhoeal disease in children, and preventive policies such as improved access to clean water, or policies curtailing tobacco consumption? We use economic...

Mass adult male circumcision campaigns for HIV prevention are underway across much of Sub-Saharan Africa. However, concern remains about risk compensation associated with the reduction in the probability of HIV transmission per risky act. This paper examines the behavioral response to male circumcision in Kisumu, Kenya. Contrary to the presumption of risk compensation, we find that the response...

Most industrialized countries have increased access to abortion over the past 30 years. Economic theory predicts that abortion laws affect sexual behavior since they change the marginal cost of having risky sex. We use gonorrhea incidence as a metric of risky sexual behavior. Using a panel of 41 North American, European and Central Asian countries over the period 1980-2000, we estimate the impa...

This paper compares the implementation of the two economic evaluation methods Cost-Effectiveness/Utility (CEA/CUA) and Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) as tools for allocation of national public funds in the health and transport sector in Sweden, respectively. We compare the recommended values for important economic parameters such as the social discount rate, the marginal cost of public funds, and ...