FRANCESCO PAOLUCCI
BEcon, MSc (University of Bologna), PhD (Erasmus)
Research Fellow, ACERH (ANU)
T: +61 2 6125 9155
E: Francesco.Paolucci@anu.edu.au

Francesco Paolucci (1977) is a health economist and Research Fellow at ACERH (ANU). Prior to taking up his current post in 2007, he worked for five years as a researcher at the Institute of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University of Rotterdam, where he wrote his PhD thesis entitled "The design of basic and supplementary health care financing schemes: implications for efficiency and affordability", under the supervision of Prof. W.P.M.M. van de Ven and Prof. F.T. Schut. His previous and current appointments are: Assistant-Director of the European Master in Law and Economics at University of Bologna; Assistant-Director of the Master in Health Economics, Policy and Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam; Coordinator of the course in "Competition policy in the health care sector" at Erasmus University Rotterdam; and Member of the iHEA Scientific Committee.

Topics of his recent studies and academic interests include:

• Health Insurance
• Regulated Competition
• Risk-equalisation
• Risk-selection
• International Comparison of Health Care Financing Schemes
• Economic analysis of competition law (eg. EC-law) in health care (insurance) markets

He is currently working with ACERH colleagues on the economic analysis of regulation in the Australian voluntary health insurance market with a particular focus on the risk-equalisation system. In April 2007, the Australian Government introduced a risk-equalisation system (previously called a reinsurance system). With risk-equalisation, insurers receive risk-adjusted payments reflecting the health risk profile of their clients as closely as possible to avoid risk-selection. The research in this area focuses on the following questions:

1. How can the system of risk-adjusted payments be improved in Australia?

2. Which are the optimal regulatory tools that the government can adopt to discourage risk selection?

Selected Publications

Paolucci F, Schut FT, Beck K, Van de Voorden C, Gress S and Zmora I, "Supplementary health insurance as a tool for risk selection in mandatory basic health insurance markets", Health Economics, Policy and Law , Vol.2 No.2, April 2007, pp.173-92.

Paolucci F, den Exter A and van de Ven WPMM, "Solidarity in competitive health insurance markets: analysing the relevant EC legal framework", Health Economics, Policy and Law , Vol.1 No.2, April 2006, pp.107-26.

Paolucci F, Prinsze F, Stam P and van de Ven WPMM, "Solidarity in competitive markets for supplementary health insurance: an empirical analysis", Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Paper 06/02,March 2006 ( download here ).

Paolucci F and Lanteri A, "Equità e/o efficienza? Economia sanitaria per non economisti", Oikonomia , 2005.

Paolucci F and Masseria C, "Equità nell'accesso ai ricoveri ospedalieri", Quaderni ACP , 2005.

Paolucci F and Brouwer W, "Introduzione ad alcuni aspetti di economia sanitaria", Quaderni ACP , 2003.