A shot for the US economy.

While previous literature examines the effects of increasing COVID-19 incidences and fatality rates on economic activity, the impact of vaccination roll-outs on public health and the economy is not yet well understood. We examine the effect of a vaccination shock in the United States on various pandemic and economic indicators. By employing a BVAR model to overcome the short data sample, we show that an increase in vaccinations is not only associated with declining incidences, reproduction and fatality rates, but also increases mobility, which dampens the effect on public health indicators in the medium term. With respect to the economy, a vaccination shock is associated with lower unemployment, higher GDP growth and also reduces uncertainty in financial markets.

Regional density of private dentists: empirical evidence from Austria.

OBJECTIVES: We investigated the determinants of disparities in the regional density of private dentists in Austria. Specifically, we focused on the relationship between the density of private dentists and their public counterparts, thereby controlling for other possible covariates of dentist density. METHODS: Dentist density was measured at the district level. We used panel data of dentist density from 121 Austrian districts over the years 2001-2008. We applied a Hausman-Taylor framework to cope with possible endogeneity and to control for cross-district effects in the dentist density. RESULTS: A significant negative relationship was found between the density of private and public dentists, indicating a substitution effect between the two dentist groups. A significant positive spatial relationship also existed for private and public dentists in the neighboring regions. Dental capacities in public and private hospitals and dental laboratories run by the public health insurance system did not have a significant effect on private dentist density. CONCLUSIONS: Although a strong negative relationship existed between private and public dentists within the districts, one should not draw the conclusion that private dentists in Austria are close substitutes for public dentists. Such a conclusion would require further empirical analysis on the utilization patterns of dental services and their relationships with financing mechanisms.

Physician density in a two-tiered health care system.

We investigate the density of non-contract (private) physicians in a two-tiered health care system, i.e., one with co-existing public and private health care providers. In particular, we analyze how the densities of private and public suppliers of outpatient health care (general practitioners and specialists) are related to each other. Using a panel of 121 Austrian districts between 2002 and 2008, we apply a Hausman-Taylor estimator, which allows to treat each of these densities as endogenous. We find that the density of non-contract specialists is positively associated with the density of non-contract general practitioners, but not significantly related to the density of contract general practitioners. We also observe a negative relationship between the densities of non-contract and contract general practitioners and the ones of non-contract and contract specialists, indicating competitive forces between the private and the public sector of the outpatient health care provision in Austria. Our results contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of non-contract physicians for health care provision in Austria.

Health status convergence at the local level: empirical evidence from Austria.

INTRODUCTION: Health is an important dimension of welfare comparisons across individuals, regions and states. Particularly from a long-term perspective, within-country convergence of the health status has rarely been investigated by applying methods well established in other scientific fields. In the following paper we study the relation between initial levels of the health status and its improvement at the local community level in Austria in the time period 1969-2004. METHODS: We use age standardized mortality rates from 2381 Austrian communities as an indicator for the health status and analyze the convergence/divergence of overall mortality for (i) the whole population, (ii) females, (iii) males and (iv) the gender mortality gap. Convergence/Divergence is studied by applying different concepts of cross-regional inequality (weighted standard deviation, coefficient of variation, Theil-Coefficient of inequality). Various econometric techniques (weighted OLS, Quantile Regression, Kendall's Rank Concordance) are used to test for absolute and conditional beta-convergence in mortality. RESULTS: Regarding sigma-convergence, we find rather mixed results. While the weighted standard deviation indicates an increase in equality for all four variables, the picture appears less clear when correcting for the decreasing mean in the distribution. However, we find highly significant coefficients for absolute and conditional beta-convergence between the periods. While these results are confirmed by several robustness tests, we also find evidence for the existence of convergence clubs. CONCLUSIONS: The highly significant beta-convergence across communities might be caused by (i) the efforts to harmonize and centralize the health policy at the federal level in Austria since the 1970s, (ii) the diminishing returns of the input factors in the health production function, which might lead to convergence, as the general conditions (e.g. income, education etc.) improve over time, and (iii) the mobility of people across regions, as people tend to move to regions/communities which exhibit more favorable living conditions.JEL classification: I10, I12, I18.