Angesichts steigender Gesundheitsausgaben spielen Gesundheitssystemvergleiche in den letzten Jahren eine immer größere Rolle. Solche "Benchmarks" können sinnvolle Anregungen zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitssystemen darstellen. Viele Gesundheitssystemvergleiche unterstellen implizit ein...

Angesichts steigender Gesundheitsausgaben spielen Gesundheitssystemvergleiche in den letzten Jahren eine immer größere Rolle. Solche Benchmarks können sinnvolle Anregungen zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitssystemen darstellen. Viele Gesundheitssystemvergleiche unterstellen implizit ein...

This paper examines the consequences of creating a fully competitive market in a sector previously dominated by a cost-minimising public firm. Workers in the economy are heterogeneous in their motivation to work in the sector. In line with empirical findings, our model implies that firms in the...

We show that partially privatizing a public firm alters underlying conjectures, in turn, changing the optimal degree of privatization. The consistent conjectures equilibrium (CCE) generates substantially greater optimal privatization than does any conjecture shared between the firms including...

Ultimately, patents have value to the extent to which the product features enabled by the patents have economic value in the marketplace. That is, products which are enhanced by inclusion of patented features should generate incremental profits to the firm offering the enhanced product. Measures...

Using a new data set, this paper finds that there is no quality difference between nonprofit and for-profit day care centers, and with the exception of one segment of the nonprofit sector, there is no efficiency difference. The cost of increasing the quality from mediocre to good is between 12...

This paper analyzes a dynamic mixed duopoly in which a profit-maximizing competitor interacts with a competitor that prices at zero (or marginal cost), with the cumulation of output affecting their relative positions over time. The modeling effort is motivated by interactions between Linux, an...

The growth of the specialty hospital industry has been one of the most important changes to the hospital industry in recent years. Specialty hospitals focus on three specific types of care: cardiac surgery, orthopedic surgery and general surgery. Proponents argue that specialty hospitals are...

Longstanding debate over the appropriate social discount rate for public projects stems from our lack of knowledge about how individual discount rates vary across people and across choice contexts. Using a sample of roughly 15,000 choices by over 2000 individuals, we estimate utility theoretic...