The literature on mergers between private hospitals suggests that such mergers often produce little benefit. Despite this, the UK government has pursued an active policy of hospital merger. These mergers are initiated by a regulator, acting on behalf of the public, and justified on the grounds...

The effect of competition on the quality of health care remains a contested issue. Most empirical estimates rely on inference from non experimental data. In contrast, this paper exploits a pro-competitive policy reform to provide estimates of the impact of competition on hospital outcomes. The...

Cross-subsidies are often considered the principal mechanism through which hospitals provide unprofitable care. Yet, hospitals' reliance on and extent of cross-subsidization are difficult to establish. We exploit entry by cardiac specialty hospitals as an exogenous shock to incumbent hospitals'...

The theory of cost-shifting posits that nonprofit hospitals respond to negative financial shocks by raising prices for privately insured patients. We examine how hospitals responded to the sharp reductions in their endowments caused by the 2008 stock market collapse. We find that the average...

The US health care sector is large and growing - health care spending in 2011 amounted to $2.7 trillion and 18% of GDP. Approximately half of health care output is allocated via markets. In this paper, we analyze the industrial organization literature on health care markets focusing on the...

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...

Medicare Part D presents a novel privatized structure for a government pharmaceutical benefit. Incentives for firms to provide low prices and high quality are generated by consumers who choose among multiple insurance plans in each market. To date the literature has primarily focused on...

In this paper, we investigate a neglected aspect of financial systems of many countries around the world: government ownership of banks. We assemble data which establish four findings. First, government ownership of banks is large and pervasive around the world. Second, such ownership is...

The fundamental feature of private contracting is its relational nature. When faced with unforeseen or unexpected circumstances, private parties, as long as the relation remains worthwhile, adjust their required performance without the need for costly renegotiation or formal recontracting....

This paper analyzes the productivity of technology and job design in emergency response systems, or 911 systems.' During the 1990s, many 911 systems adopted Enhanced 911' (E911), where information technology is used to link automatic caller identification to a database of address and location...