This study applies conjoint analysis (CA) to estimate the marginal willingness-to-pay (MWTP) of elderly individuals for a reduction of the risk of fracture of the femur. The good in question are hypothetical hip protectors which lower the risk of a fracture by different amounts. Other attributes are ease of handling, wearing comfort, and out-of-pocket cost. Thus, the novelty of the present work lies in its letting risk reduction be traded off against several attributes. In 500 face-to-face interviews, pensioners stated whether or not they would buy the product. Results suggest that MWTP for wearing comfort exceeds that for risk reduction. Indeed, willingness to pay for the product as a whole is negative, indicating that it should not be included as a mandatory benefit in health insurance.
This contribution purports to come up with reform proposals that promise to improve the benefit-cost ratio in health from the point of view of taxpayers and (potential) patients. It starts by noting that a high and increasing share of health care expenditure in the GDP does not per se indicate a need for reform. Rather, the guiding idea is that decisions in the health care sector should be tied more closely to the preferences of consumers, who must obtain more ways to express their willingness-to-pay. The 10 proposals are directed to health insurers, physicians and medical associations, hospital management, and policy makers proper. Moreover, initial steps for implementing them are sketched, such as abolishing the division of lines in the regulation of (private) insurance, freeing health insurers from any-willing-provider clauses, refraining from imposing uniform nationwide fee schedules, and directly subsidizing poor consumers for buying health insurance rather than institutions such as hospitals and homes for long-term care.
We analyse post-war Dutch migration to New Zealand. We document that history, reflect on analytical and econometric modelling and then combine a sample of Dutch migrants in New Zealand with a representative sample of Dutch in The Netherlands to estimate wage equations and the determinants of the migration decision. We use the results for ex post evaluation of the migration decision.
Health policy makers know that their decisions affect the chances of well-being and survival of individuals and that they implicitly are valuing human lives. Evidence with regard to willingness-to-pay (WTP) informs about the value individuals themselves put on these chances; it thus holds the promise of contributing to consistent decisions that lead to an improved benefit-cost ratio of health services for (potential) patients. However, such improvement is more likely if information about WTP is used by competing health insurers rather than the government.
The efficiency of hospitals is of interest to health insurers, government authorities and hospital management itself. However, econometric methods for determining (in)efficiency have severe drawbacks since hospitals are multiproduct firms and because the duality between production and cost functions cannot be assumed. In this work, non-parametric, deterministic data envelopment analysis (DEA) is used to measure the relative inefficiency of 89 Swiss hospitals covering the years 1993-1996 (310 observations). Special attention is given to the role of patient days in the production of health. The findings depend on whether patient days are viewed as an input of patient time or as an output, as in previous studies. While the probability of a unit being inefficient cannot be explained using the available data, the degree of overall inefficiency is shown to significantly depend on the financial incentives faced by management, in particular due to subsidization. Private hospitals do not seem to be less inefficient than public ones; however, this may be caused by their 'overusing' inputs that in fact are valued as amenities by patients. This consideration points to an important limitation in applying the purely quantitative criteria of DEA to hospitals.
This paper presents a model with flexible wages in which unemployment of low-skilled labor is possible in equilibrium, whereas high-skilled workers are fully employed. Thus, the model can explain why even in countries with flexible labor markets and full employment of skilled labor an employment problem exists at the bottom of the skill spectrum. The model is used to evaluate the impact of technological change and increased skill supply on the employment of low-skilled workers. It is shown that a switch to technologies with higher skill requirements unambiguously leads to a rise in unemployment of low-skilled workers. An increase in the supply of high-skilled labor has a positive effect on the employment level of low-skilled labor.
Wie in allen hoch entwickelten Volkswirtschaften ist die Sicherung von Wohlstand und Lebensqualität in der Schweiz nur möglich, sofern die Unternehmen im globalen Innovationswettbewerb erfolgreich sind. Bildung, Forschung und Technologie kommt deshalb eine überragende Bedeutung zu. Ebenso wichtig sind die Wechselwirkungen an den Schnittstellen von Wissenschaft, Technik, Berufsbildung, Unternehmen und internationalen Netzwerken. Die Herausforderungen und Chancen des Innovationswettbewerbs betreffen nicht nur einige Pionierfirmen, sondern die Lebensumstände aller in der Schweiz lebenden und arbeitenden Menschen. Ziel der Innovationspolitik ist es, die Innovationsfähigkeit des gesamten Wirtschaftsstandorts Schweiz sicherzustellen beziehungsweise zu erhöhen.
This paper examines the distributional effects of international outsourcing in a two-sector, two-factor model. The analysis allows for switches between diversified and specialized equilibria. Also, equilibria in which only some firms of a sector outsource (incomplete or partial outsourcing) are considered. It is the interplay of the cost-saving and substitution effects of international outsourcing that determines the nature of the outsourcing equilibrium and its distributional consequences.
