Thesis: This dissertation sheds light on the challenges policy makers are facing while implementing large-scale healthcare and welfare reforms. This dissertation highlights the necessity to take into account unintended and oftentimes overlooked distributional consequences of policy interventions, as well as the broad institutional framework. In Chapter 1, we test the effects of a considerable DRG tariff refinement that occurred in 2012, designed to reduce financial risks of French maternity wards. After controlling for multiple patient, hospital and regional characteristics and allowing for hospital and year effects, we found that introducing new severity levels and clinical factors into the reimbursement algorithm had no significant effect on the probability of a scheduled C-section being performed. In Chapter 2, we evaluate the effects of a hospital funding reform, whereby hip and knee replacements were reimbursed based on a price by volume formula, with the expectation that payments would be subsequently adjusted with respect to hospital performance on quality indicators. We found a significant decrease in acute length of stay associated with Quality based payments ( QBPs), although it did not result in an improved quality of care. Chapter 3 looks into the effect a maternity subsidy { called Maternity Capital (MC) { introduced in Russia in 2007. We conclude that the MC did not significantly affect the vast majority of analyzed child and household outcomes. In the meantime, there is tentative evidence that the MC may have resulted in improved socialization of female children. In addition, wealthier households may have bene_ted more fully from the MC by accumulating more savings that could be plausibly used for improving housing conditions.