By their nature, the recent antitrust cases scrutinizing the two proposed health insurance mega-mergers -- Anthem with Cigna and Aetna with Humana -- focused on narrow definitions of specific markets and the likely static impact on prices. But the antitrust proceedings omitted a broader...

Recent discussions in health reform circles have pinned great hopes on the prospect of innovation as the solution to the high-cost, inadequate-quality U.S. health system. But U.S. health care institutions - insurers, providers, and specialists - have ceded leadership in innovation to Indian...

U.S. hospitals and physicians regularly charge uninsured patients and patients receiving care outside their health-plan networks far more what most health insurers pay and far more than their actual costs. Such practices have triggered over 100 lawsuits and prompted calls for pricing...

Background Disclosure of authors' financial interests has been proposed as a strategy for protecting the integrity of the biomedical literature. We examined whether authors' financial interests were disclosed consistently in articles on coronary stents published in 2006. Methodology/Principal...

Patents for several blockbuster biological products are expected to expire soon. The Food and Drug Administration is examining whether biologics can and should be treated like pharmaceuticals with regard to generics. In contrast with pharmaceuticals, which are manufactured through chemical...

This Essay formulates a positive model that predicts when commercial parties will employ private ordering to enforce their agreements. The typical enforcement mechanism associated with private ordering is the reputation mechanism, in which a merchant community punishes parties in breach of...

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature in transaction cost economics (TCE) across multiple social science disciplines and business fields. We show how TCE has branched out from its economic roots to examine empirical phenomena in several other areas. We find TCE...

As great admirers of The Boss and as fans of live entertainment, we share in the popular dismay over rising ticket prices for live performances. But we have been asked as antitrust scholars to examine the proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, and we do so with the objectivity and...

This paper develops a transaction cost economic model for regulation and applies the model to environmental siting regulations designed to overcome NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) political opposition. Negotiations between developers and resistant local communities to site waste facilities, such as...