Hospital cost efficiency is dependent on the potential to generate cost economies, which imply lower costs for hospitals that are, for example, larger or more diversified. Although scale and scope economies have been recognized in the literature on hospital costs, agglomeration economies due to...

Spatial spillovers and inter-dependencies among industries are often ignored in conventional production studies, despite substantial evidence suggesting their importance. Thick market or agglomeration effects may be associated with own-industry, supply-side, and demand-side spillovers. Our...