We study the impact of regulating product entry and quality information requirements on an oligopoly equilibrium and consumer welfare. Product testing can reduce consumer uncertainty, but also increase entry costs and delay entry. Using variation between EU and US medical device regulations, we...

When firms span related product categories, spillovers across categories become central to firm strategy and industrial policy, due to their potential to foreclose competition and affect innovation incentives. We exploit major new product innovations in one medical device category, and detailed...

Using a detailed dataset of hospitals' purchase orders, we find that information on purchasing by peer hospitals leads to reductions in the prices hospitals negotiate for supplies. Identification is based on staggered access to information across hospitals over time. Within coronary stents,...

We estimate the effects of horizontal mergers on marginal cost efficiencies – an ubiquitous merger justification – using data containing supply purchase orders from a large sample of US hospitals 2009-2015. The data provide a level of detail that has been difficult to observe previously, and...

In markets where consumers seek expert advice regarding purchases, firms seek to influence experts, raising concerns about biased advice. Assessing firm-expert interactions requires identifying their causal impact on demand, amidst frictions like market power. We study pharmaceutical firms'...

Regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) are a popular method to estimate treatment effects. However, RDDs may fail to yield consistent estimates if the forcing variable can be manipulated by the agent. In this paper, we examine one interesting set of economic models with such a feature....

This paper reviews the literature devoted to studying markets for health care services and health insurance. There has been tremendous growth and progress in this field. A tremendous amount of new research has been done in this area over the last 10 years. In addition, there has been increasing...

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program on hospital choice and consumer welfare for rural residents. The Flex Program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous Medicare...

We estimate a bargaining model of competition between hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs) and use the estimates to evaluate the effects of hospital mergers. We find that MCO bargaining restrains hospital prices significantly. The model demonstrates the potential impact of coinsurance...

Health information technology (IT) adoption, it is argued, will dramatically improve patient care. We study the impact of hospital IT adoption on patient outcomes focusing on the roles of technological and organizational complements in affecting IT's value and explore underlying mechanisms...