We study how firms target and influence expert intermediaries. In our empirical context, pharmaceutical manufacturers provide payments to physicians during promo- tional interactions. We develop an identification strategy based on plausibly exogenous variation in payments driven by differential...

We estimate the effects of horizontal mergers on marginal cost efficiencies - an ubiquitous merger justification - using data containing supply purchase orders from a large sample of US hospitals 2009-2015. The data provide a level of detail that has been difficult to observe previously, and a...

We estimate the effects of horizontal mergers on marginal cost efficiencies – an ubiquitous merger justification – using data containing supply purchase orders from a large sample of US hospitals 2009-2015. The data provide a level of detail that has been difficult to observe previously, and...

We estimate the effects of hospital mergers, using detailed data containing medical supply transactions (representing 23 percent of operating costs) from a sample of US hospitals 2009-2015. Pre-merger price variation across hospitals (Gini coefficient 7 percent) suggests significant...

Regression discontinuity designs (RDDs) are a popular method to estimate treatment effects. However, RDDs may fail to yield consistent estimates if the forcing variable can be manipulated by the agent. In this paper, we examine one interesting set of economic models with such a feature....