We estimate the effects of horizontal mergers on marginal cost efficiencies - an ubiquitous merger justification … mechanisms underlying "buyer power." We find that merger target hospitals save on average $176 thousand (or 1.5 percent) annually …

by horizontal hospital mergers as an instrument, we show that rising prices raise the cost of labor by increasing …

hospital financial data to study the resulting uncompensated care, medical care for which no payment is received. We use both … person costs local hospitals $900 each year in uncompensated care. Similarly, the closure of a nearby hospital increases the … uncompensated care costs of remaining hospitals. Increases in the uninsured population also lower hospital profit margins, which …

billing data that do not reflect actual payments made. Although the responsiveness of prices to hospital performance depends … rankings, based on hospital excess-mortality and incorporate them into our price models. We are interested in the type … the widely-reported risk-adjustment methodology used in the federal Hospital Compare reporting system for ranking cardiac …

in California. The function is additively separable in: a hospital price paid by the insurer, the distance traveled, and …We estimate an insurer-specific preference function which rationalizes hospital referrals for privately-insured births … plan and severity-specific hospital fixed effects (capturing hospital quality). We use an inequality estimator that allows …

trace out the effects of greater managed care penetration on hospital utilization and spending throughout the health care … system. We find that when more seniors enroll in Medicare managed care, hospital costs decline for all seniors and for …

stock market collapse. We find that the average hospital did not engage in cost-shifting, but average hospitals that likely …

We examine the relationship between the adoption of EMR and hospital operating costs. We first identify a puzzle that …

compare hospital performance for emergency patients: plausibly exogenous variation in ambulance-company assignment. Ambulances … data from 2002-2008, we show that ambulance company assignment importantly affects hospital choice for patients in the same … zip code. Using data for New York state from 2000-2006 that matches exact patient addresses to hospital discharge records …