Essays on Healthcare, Long-term Care and Retirement

Abstract

This thesis focuses on three distinct topics around healthcare and ageing. The first chapter assess the effectiveness of the current regime that regulates the entry and geographical distribution of pharmacies in Italy. Using a structural model from the recent literature on entry I find that the public interest view is not supported in the Italian case. Alternative policies that combine entry deregulation and markup reduction are found to achieve the same if not better geographical coverage by pharmacies, higher supply of pharmaceutical services, entry by new pharmacists and important government savings. The second chapter seeks to see whether financial literacy can be a factor that affects demand for private long-term care insurance. Using detailed data from the Health and Retirement Study I construct two comprehensive indices for financial literacy that capture various aspects and degrees of financial skills and knowledge. Using an instrumental variables approach I find that those with higher financial literacy are more likely to own private long-term care insurance. The third chapter investigates the effect of gradual retirement on a variety of health outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity approach I find that partial retirement has a preserving health effect in old age contrary to full time work that is found to deteriorate health. The effect of partial retirement on health is in fact larger in magnitude, suggesting that the health effects of working are non linear in old age.