I’m a third year PhD Candidate in Economics at the University of Bern. My main research interests are in the field of Applied Public Economics, especially empirical Health Economics.
Publications
The impact of physician exits in primary care: A study of practice handovers with Boris Kaiser and Tamara Bischof (Health Policy, 2023, Vol 135)
Recent studies on physician exits suggest that general practitioners (GPs) have an important impact on health care utilization and costs, but the transmission channels - interpersonal dis- continuities of care, practice style differences and deterioration in access - are usually not clear. Our objective is to estimate the short-run and long-run impacts of switches in GPs on patients’ health care utilization and costs, while all other factors of the health care setting remain the same. To do this, we collect data on handovers of primary care practices in Switzerland, occurring between 2007 and 2015. We link this data to rich insurance claims to construct a panel dataset of roughly 240,000 patients. Employing a difference-in-difference type framework, we find transitory increases in overall visits and costs, which are likely caused by the entering GP’s initial re-assessment of patients’ health care needs. Additionally, we find long-term increases in specialist health care utilization and ambulatory costs. The latter finding can be explained by changes in practice styles between the exiting GP and her successor, who is typically much younger and more likely to be female. In contrast to the literature on practice closures, we do not find evidence on reduced overall utilization rates. An important lesson for health policy is thus to preserve patients’ access to care in the case of GP exits.
Work in Progress
A Prescription for Knowledge: Patient Information and Generic Substitution (with Nicolas Schreiner and Christian Schmid) 2022
Christmas Shopping in the Prescription Drug Market (with Michael Gerfin) 2023
Conference Presentations
- 2023
- sggö PhD Conference, University of Bern
- Brown Bag, Department of Economics, University of Bern
- dggö Annual Conference, Leibniz University Hannover
- 2022
- Brown Bag, Department of Economics, University of Bern
- Swiss Health Economics Workshop, Lucerne
- Biannual Conference of the European Health Economics Association (EUHEA), University of Oslo
CV
Personal
- Swiss and Swedish Citizen.
Research Interests
Health Economics, Applied Microeconometrics, Applied Public Economics
Education
- Ph.D. in Economics, University of Bern, 2021-2024 (expected).
- Swiss Program for Beginning Doctoral Students in Economics (Microeconomics, Econometrics), Study Center Gerzensee, 2020-2021.
- M.Sc. in Applied Economic Analysis, University of Bern, 2018-2020.
- B.Sc. in Economics, University of Bern, 2015-2018.
Teaching Assistant
- Introductory Econometrics (Bachelor), Spring 2021 & 2022 & 2023
- Seminar Workshop in Econometrics I (Bachelor), Fall 2021 & 2022