Persistent and transient productive efficiency in the African airline industry.

Airline efficiency growth is considered one of the key factors for aviation sustainability in Africa and for creating a successful relationship between aviation activities and economic development in the continent. This paper proposes estimating the efficiency of African airlines in the period 2010-2019 using a state-of-the-art stochastic frontier model disentangling persistent efficiency, transient efficiency, and unobserved heterogeneity. We also examine the impact on both persistent and transient efficiency of (i) ownership structure, (ii) political stability, (iii) airline geographical location, (iv) airline domicile country's economic freedom, and (v) airline participation in a global alliance. We find evidence of relatively low efficiency and decreasing returns to scale, implying that it is important to achieve better utilization of inputs. Our findings also suggest that protectionism seems still an important driver of efficiency in a context characterized by a lack of liberalization. However, enhanced economic freedom is found to be more relevant in improving the efficiencies of African airlines, suggesting that policy interventions aimed at speeding up the liberalization process may help to remove the conditions that make air carriers operate inefficiently.

The strange case of less C-sections: Hospital ownership, market concentration, and DRG-tariff regulation.

We evaluate the relationship between hospital ownership and responses to a policy providing large financial incentives for vaginal deliveries and financial disincentives for C-sections. We compare for-profit, nonprofit, and public hospitals operating in a public health care system organized according to the quasi-market model. We first theoretically show that hospital ownership matters insofar different hospitals are characterized by different ethical preferences. We also show that competition makes ownership less important. We then consider the case study of Lombardy in Italy. We exploit spatial variation in hospital ownership and in market concentration at the local level to evaluate the relationship between ownership and the probability of C-section. According to theory, empirical results strongly suggest that competitive pressures from alternative providers tend to homogenize behaviors. However, in local monopolies, in presence of a strong monetary incentive toward vaginal deliveries, we do observe less C-section from private for-profit hospitals than from public and private nonprofit hospitals, especially when C-sections are medically appropriate.

Determinants of transient and persistent hospital efficiency: The case of Italy.

In this paper, we extend the 4-random-component closed skew-normal stochastic frontier model by including exogenous determinants of hospital persistent (long-run) and transient (short-run) inefficiency, separated from unobserved heterogeneity. We apply this new model to a dataset composed by 133 Italian hospitals during the period 2008-2013. We show that average total inefficiency is about 23%, higher than previous estimates; hence, a model where the different types of inefficiency and hospital unobserved characteristics are not confounded allows us to get less biased estimates of hospital inefficiency. Moreover, we find that transient efficiency is more important than persistent efficiency, as it accounts for 60% of the total one. Last, we find that ownership (for-profit hospitals are more transiently inefficient and less persistently inefficient than not-for-profit ones, whereas public hospitals are less transiently inefficient than not-for-profit ones), specialization (specialized hospitals are more transiently inefficient than general ones; i.e., there is evidence of scope economies in short-run efficiency), and size (large-sized hospitals are better than medium and small ones in terms of transient inefficiency) are determinants of both types of inefficiency, although we do not find any statistically significant effect of multihospital systems and teaching hospitals.

The redistributive effects of copayment in outpatient prescriptions: evidence from Lombardy.

BACKGROUND: In Italy, copayment has changed its nature and it can no longer be simply considered a system to curb inappropriate expenditure. It has become an important form of revenue for public health care provision, but it might also become a source of distortions in income and health benefits redistribution. METHODS: We use a rich administrative dataset gathering information on patients demand (whose records have been matched to income declared for tax purposes) to study the effects of an additional copayment (the so called "superticket" introduced by the Italian government in 2012) in Lombardy, the biggest Italian Region whose socio-economic dimension is comparable to that of many European countries (e.g., the Netherlands, Switzerland, etc.). RESULTS: Our analysis shows that at the aggregate level the non-uniform superticket schedule adopted in Lombardy is slightly pro-poor, but this result coexists with evidences pointing towards possible cases of restriction to access caused by the additional copayment. CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of the superticket and the ensuing increase in the out-of pocket payment for health care raises questions about the distribution of the burden among patients, and the sustainability of the extra revenue through time. This issue needs to be further investigated by combining health status data with the information in this dataset.

The effectiveness-efficiency trade-off in health care: The case of hospitals in Lombardy, Italy.

We study the presence and the magnitudes of trade-offs between health outcomes and hospitals' efficiency using a data set from Lombardy, Italy, for the period 2008-2011. Our goal is to analyze whether the pressures for cost containment may affect hospital performance in terms of population health status. Unlike previous work in this area, we analyze hospitals at the ward level so comparisons can be made across more homogeneous treatments. We focus on two different health outcomes: mortality and readmission rates. We find that there is a trade-off between mortality rates and efficiency, as more efficient hospitals have higher mortality rates. We also find, however, that more efficient hospitals have lower readmission rates. Moreover, we show that focusing the analysis at the ward level is essential, since there is evidence of higher mortality rates in general medicine and surgery, while in oncology mortality is lower in more efficient hospitals. Furthermore, we find that consideration of spatial processes is important since mortality rates are higher for hospitals subject to high degree of horizontal competition, but lower for those hospitals having strong competition but high efficiency. This implies that the interplay of efficient resource allocation and hospital competition is important for the sustainability and effectiveness of regional health care systems.

The impact of informal and formal care disruption on older adults' psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic in UK.

This paper investigates how formal and informal caregiving disruptions-due to the U.K. government's non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) aimed at reducing transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus-may have affected the likelihood of psychological distress among older individuals. We model the association between disruption of formal and informal care and mental health of the elderly during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic using a recursive simultaneous - equation model for binary variables. Our findings reveal that public interventions, which are most essential for reducing the pandemic spread, influenced the provision of formal and informal care. The lack of adequate long-term care following the COVID-19 outbreak has also had negative repercussions on the psychological well-being of these adults.

Is there a bias in patient choices for hospital care? Evidence from three Italian regional health systems.

Patients choice is at the core of competition in hospital care. In spite of a flourishing literature, little is known about the true process leading patients to choose a specific provider. Most models in this literature assume - without testing - that hospitals are perceived to be homogeneous providers. In this article we take a different direction. We assume that patients have a bias towards some types of hospitals, we test this hypothesis and show which attributes determine this bias. We exploit the characteristic of Italian health care organization, where devolution has allowed regional systems to choose the level of competition and the private-public hospitals mix. We estimate conditional logit models for hip replacement admissions in three regions (Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia-Romagna) over the period 2014- 2016. We show that, depending on the competition framework (peculiar to each region) patients are aware that some hospitals are best performers in their area and are willing to travel more to be admitted there. This is particularly true for regional health care systems where competition between public and private providers is well developed. Our model provides interesting policy implications: a) the idea that hospitals are different in patients perception should be kept in mind in the architecture of the market for hospital care; b) clinical quality as a driver to patients choice seems to work better in a less regulated competition settings.

PAHA study: psychological active and healthy aging: psychological wellbeing, proactive attitude and happiness effects of whole-body vibration versus Multicomponent Training in aged women: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Evidence demonstrates that physical exercise and psychological wellbeing are closely interlinked, particularly in older-aged women. However, research investigating how different forms of exercise influence mental health in older-aged women is underdeveloped. METHODS/DESIGN: A randomized controlled trial (N = 300) will assess the relative effectiveness of two different exercise programs (whole-body vibration and Multicomponent Training) for improving psychological wellbeing in older-aged women. The following outcomes will be assessed at three time points (that is, pre, post, and follow-up): psychological wellbeing, proactive attitude, quality of life, and happiness. DISCUSSION: Results will have important implications for preventing psychological and physiological disease in older-aged women and for managing health-related costs for this population group. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Number NCT01966562 on Clinical Gov database the 8 October 2013.