In: European Journal of Health Economics
Ambient air pollution is the environmental factor with the most significant impact on human health. Several epidemiological studies provide evidence for an association between ambient air pollution and human health. However, the recent economic literature has challenged the identification strategy used in these studies. This paper contributes to the ongoing discussion by investigating the...
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The productive efficiency of a firm can be decomposed into two parts, one persistent and one transient. So far, most of the cost efficiency studies estimated frontier models that provide either the transient or the persistent part of productive efficiency. This distinction seems to be appealing also for regulators. During the last decades, public utilities such as water and electricity have...
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Dynamic partial adjustment models of residential electricity demand account for the fact that households may not adjust electricity consumption immediately in response to changes in prices, income, and other relevant factors, because of behavioral habits or adjustment costs for the capital stock of appliances. However, forward-looking behavior is generally neglected. Expectations about future...
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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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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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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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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 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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