Pressure on health care systems due to the increasing expenditures of the elderly population is pushing policy makers to adopt new regulation and payment schemes for nursing home services. We sketch a simple theoretical model to predict the behavior of nursing homes under different payment schemes. We then investigate the implications of prospective payments on nursing home costs using a...
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The purpose of this study is to analyze the level of cost efficiency of Swiss Post’s postal delivery units to enable policy makers’ as well as Swiss Post to decide on the reactions to market changes. In particular, we use different panel data models to assess cost efficiency in these units to account for unobserved heterogeneity. The results from applying Mundlak’s formulation to the...
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In: Energy economics, 2012, vol. 34, no. 5, p. 1484–1491
This paper estimates a US frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 ‘states’ over the period 1995 to 2007 using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA). Utilizing an econometric energy demand model, the (in)efficiency of each state is modelled and it is argued that this represents a measure of the inefficient use of residential energy in each state (i.e....
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In this paper we investigate households demand for school meals using a stated preferences approach. Data are collected through phone-structured interviews to 905 residents with children in the German-speaking region of Switzerland during 2007. A Poisson model with random effects is used to explore factors affecting the demand for meals at school. The results show that meals price, household...
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In Switzerland, nursing home services are mainly provided by regulated public and private nonprofit organizations. Some of them are created by local governments as foundations. This provides a unique setting to analyze the impact of the institutional form on the performance of nursing homes. We propose a model where the institutional form is represented as a legal constraint which affects...
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In: Empirical economics, 2012, vol. 42, no. 2, p. 471-486
Because of bacterial resistance, current antibiotic consumption is reinforced by past use, and future utility is lower. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence on habit and addictive behavior toward antibiotics by exploring variations in the average consumption of antibiotics across 20 Italian regions. Using a balanced panel data set (2000–2009), we estimate myopic and rational...
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In: Journal of transport economics and policy, 2012, vol. 46, no. 1, p. 51-66
Efficiency measurement in public transport requires an adequate account of unobserved network characteristics that are typically modelled as factors separable from the production process. This paper proposes a panel data model that allows for non-separable firm-specific heterogeneity in an input distance function. The proposed model is applied to a sample of German and Swiss urban transit...
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In: Energy economics, 2011, vol. 33, no. 5, p. 889-895
In this paper we present an empirical analysis of the residential demand for electricity using annual aggregate data at the state level for 48 US states from 1995 to 2007. Earlier literature has examined residential energy consumption at the state level using annual or monthly data, focusing on the variation in price elasticities of demand across states or regions, but has failed to recognize...
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In: Energy policy, 2011, vol. 39, no. 10, p. 5811-5817
This paper presents an empirical analysis on the residential demand for electricity by time-of-day. This analysis has been performed using aggregate data at the city level for 22 Swiss cities for the period 2000 to 2006. For this purpose, we estimated two log- log demand equations for peak and off-peak electricity consumption using a static and a dynamic partial adjustment approach. These...
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In: Applied economics, 2012, vol. 44, no. 3, p. 387-397
Traffic noise, air pollution and electromagnetic pollution (i.e. non-ionizing radiation, also called electrosmog) are typical negative local externalities in urban areas. They are side-effects of human and economic activity (e.g. road transport, telecommunication) and they affect individuals’ well-being negatively without compensation. In recent years, the increased number of mobile phone...
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