We examine the association between market structure and cost structure using a national sample of U.S. hospitals. Cost structure determines operating risk; therefore, it is important to understand factors that influence managerial choices on cost structure. Market structure is a potentially...

A major feature of healthcare systems is substantial variation in hospital productivity. Productivity widely varies across NHS hospitals. This research investigates factors that may explain variations in hospital productivity. We employ a non-parametric panel regression technique to explore the...

In sub-Saharan Africa, hospitals absorb the greatest proportion of total health resources according to the World health Organization. Senegal is no exception to this, out of the total government expenditure in the health sector, a third is absorbed by public hospitals and specialized health...

Theoretical models predict asymmetric information in health insurance markets may generate inefficient outcomes due to adverse selection and moral hazard. However, previous empirical research has found it difficult to disentangle adverse selection from moral hazard in health care. We empirically...

We discuss the nonparametric approach to profit efficiency analysis at the firm and industry levels in the absence of complete price information, and propose two new insights. First, choosing one commodity (whose price is known) as a numeraire good enables us to measure profit inefficiency in...

The generation of unintended residuals when producing intended outputs is the key factor behind our serious problems with pollution. The way this joint production is modelled is therefore of crucial importance for our understanding and empirical efforts to change economic activities in order to...

Due to strict reliance on competitive labor markets, standard approaches which measure skill biased technical change (SBTC) conflate labor market distortions which prevent firms from choosing the efficient ratio between skilled and unskilled labor and `true' SBTC. This contrasts with recent...

This paper models Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) as one of the outputs that results from a firm's decisions regarding what and how to produce. The framework developed allows for studying technical efficiency and deriving a system of internal shadow prices to quantify the value of...

We propose a novel nonparametric method for the structural identification of unobserved technological heterogeneity in production. We assume cost minimization as the firms' behavioral objective, and we model unobserved heterogeneity as an unobserved productivity factor on which firms condition...

Using the Colombian Annual Manufacturing Survey (AMS) between 2000 and 2014, this paper investigates the effect of labor contract modalities on firm productivity within the industrial sector through a structural model. We find that temporary workers contribute to firms’ labor productivity to a...