Exploring the effectiveness of demand-side retail pharmaceutical expenditure reforms : Cross-country evidence from weighted-average least squares estimation.

Increasing expenditures on retail pharmaceuticals bring a critical challenge to the financial stability of healthcare systems worldwide. Policy makers have reacted by introducing a range of measures to control the growth of public pharmaceutical expenditure (PPE). Using panel data on European and non-European OECD member countries from 1990 to 2015, we evaluate the effectiveness of six types of demand-side expenditure control measures including physician-level behaviour measures, system-level price-control measures and substitution measures, alongside a proxy for cost-sharing and add a new dimension to the existing empirical evidence hitherto based on national-level and meta-studies.

[Government earnings from cigarette smoking of adolescents in Austria].

Unlabelled: Smoking prevalence in minors has increased considerably since 1986. In comparison to other European countries, smoking rates in 15-year-old students are the highest in Austria. Goal of our study was the estimation of government earnings from tobacco consumption of minors in Austria.