Mercedes Vellez

• PhD in Economics
• World Bank

Honduras has recently contracted-out the provision of primary health care services to decentralized providers in order to expand health care coverage in rural areas. This paper evaluates the impact of contracting-out on health outputs and outcomes related to access, quality, and equity in health care. The impact evaluation design is quasi-experimen...

Honduras has recently contracted-out the provision of primary health care services to decentralized providers in order to expand health care coverage in rural areas. This paper evaluates the impact of contracting-out on health outputs and outcomes related to access, quality, and equity in health care. The impact evaluation design is quasi-experimen...

PPPs have been implemented broadly around the world in the infrastructure sector-­‐water and sanitation, transports, energy, and telecommunications-­‐ and, more recently, in the provision of public services-­‐education, health, prisons, and water and waste management. Key aspects of the contract design, such as risk allocation and payment mechanism...

Medical device expenditures are an important driver of the growth in health care spending and hospitals pay significantly different prices for the same medical device. This paper uses hospitals’ acquisition data to explore the determinants of price discrimination in the acquisition of medical devices across Italian hospitals considering demand fact...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on auctions and negotiations. Using healthcare facilities data on procurement contracts, I find evidence that auctions do not yield lower prices than negotiations. This result is robust to specifications tackling quality differences, endogenous participation, and the bilateral and multilateral natu...