We derive optimal rules for paying hospitals in a public health care system in which providers can choose quality and random patient demand is rationed by waiting time. Since waiting time imposes real costs on patients hospital payment rules should take account of their effect on waiting time as...

Patient mobility is a key issue in the EU who recently passed a new law on patients' right to EU-wide provider choice. In this paper we use a Hotelling model with two regions that differ in technology to study the impact of patient mobility on health care quality, health care financing and...

We study the incentives for hospitals to provide quality and expend cost-reducing effort when their budgets are soft, i.e., the payer may cover deficits or confiscate surpluses. The basic set up is a Hotelling model with two hospitals that differ in location and face demand uncertainty, where...

Using a spatial competition framework with three ex ante identical hospitals, we study the effects of a hospital merger on quality, price and welfare. The merging hospitals always reduce quality, but the non-merging hospital responds by reducing quality if prices are fixed and increasing quality...

We study the impact of exposing hospitals in a National Health Service (NHS) to non-price competition by exploiting a patient choice reform in Norway in 2001. The reform facilitates a difference-in-difference research design due to geographical variation in the scope for competition. Using rich...

Using a spatial competition framework with three ex ante identical firms, we study the effects of a horizontal merger on quality, price and welfare. The merging firms always reduce quality. They also increase prices if demand responsiveness to quality is sufficiently low. The non-merging firm,...

We study the effect of competition on quality in markets such as health care, long-term care and education, when providers choose both prices and quality in a setting of spatial competition. We offer a novel mechanism whereby competition leads to lower quality. This mechanism relies on two key...

We study the effects of a hospital merger using a spatial competition framework with semialtruistic hospitals that invest in quality and expend cost-containment effort facing regulated prices. We find that the merging hospitals always reduce quality, whereas non-merging hospitals respond by...