In: Economic Modelling, 2015, vol. 51, p. 289-298
Population aging is challenging governments to find new solutions to finance the increasing demand for nursing home care and slow down the increase in expenditures. In this light, many European countries are currently considering reforms to increase efficiency in the provision of nursing home services. One popular restructuring policy is the transformation of public organizations into private...
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The purpose of this study is to assess differences in the levels of cost efficiency of bus lines operated under competitively tendered contracts and performance-based negotiated contracts. Following the revision of the Swiss railways act in 1996, regional public authorities were given the choice between two different contractual regimes to procure public passenger transport services. We...
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In: Regional Science and urban economics, 2014, vol. 49, p. 242-251
The benefits of separating drug prescribing and dispensing are still unclear, in particular when drug consumption is characterized by important spillovers. We investigate the role of dispensing physicians in the consumption of antibiotics characterized by two opposite external effects: infection prevention and control, and bacterial resistance. We model the interaction between competing...
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In: Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 2014, vol. 85, no. 3, p. 475-495
In this paper we investigate the household demand for childcare during lunchtime at school 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. Poisson models with random and fixed effects are used to explore factors affecting the demand. Ordinal probit models are also...
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We investigate the relationship between costs and quality in nonprofit nursing homes, a key issue in the present context of cost containment measures. In accordance with the economic theory of production, we estimate a three-inputs total cost function for nursing home services using data from 45 nursing homes in Switzerland between 2006 and 2010. Quality is measured by means of clinical...
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In: Health policy, 2014, vol. 115, no. 2-3, p. 237–248
Nursing homes; prospective payment; quality of care; policy change
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In: The european journal of health economics, 2013, vol. 14, no. 4, p. 587-599
Because of evidence of causal association between antibiotic use and bacterial resistance, the implementation of national policies has emerged as a interesting tool for controlling and reversing bacterial resistance. The aim of this study was to assess the impact of public policies on antibiotic use in Europe using a differences-in-differences approach. Comparable data on systemic antibiotics ...
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In: Journal of transport economics and policy, 2013, vol. 47, no. 3, p. 419-436
A number of static and dynamic specifications of a log-linear demand function for public transport are estimated using aggregate panel data for twenty-two Indian states over the period 1990 to 2001. In all cases, transit demand is significant and inelastic with respect to the fare. Service quality, approximated by the density of the coverage of the transport service, seems to be an important...
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In: Energy economics, 2013, vol. 36, p. 648-657
This paper presents an empirical analysis on residential demand for electricity. This analysis has been performed using aggregate panel data at the province level for 47 Spanish provinces for the period from 2000 to 2008. For this purpose, we estimated a log–log demand equation for electricity consumption using a dynamic partial adjustment approach. This dynamic demand function has been...
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Regulation of prescription and dispensing of antibiotics has a twin purpose: to enhance access to antibiotic treatment and to reduce inappropriate use of drugs. Nevertheless, incentives on antibiotics to dispensing physicians may lead to inefficiencies. We model the interaction between competing physicians (with and without dispensing of drugs) and patients exposed to bacterial infections when...
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