Health care is one of the most important public policy areas both due to the economic importance of the sector and its impact on individual well-being. Health and hospital services have historically been provided through centralised, highly regulated or non-market means in most OECD countries...

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...

Research showing how upward social comparison breeds competitive behavior has so far conflated local comparisons in task performance (e.g. a test score) with comparisons on a more general scale (i.e. an underlying skill). Using a ranking methodology (Garcia, Tor, & Gonzalez, 2006) to separate...

Economic theory suggests that competitive pressures will impact on organisational efficiency. In recent years, universities in Australia and New Zealand have faced increased competition for students. The aim of this paper is to explore the efficiency of Australian and New Zealand public...

Reference price regimes for prescription drugs are usually implemented with the aim of curbing public expenditure with pharmaceuticals, induce drug substitution from branded to generics drugs and enhance competition. In these systems, patients co-pay the difference between the drug's pharmacy...

The theoretical relationship between market structure (number of firms) and conduct (pricing behavior) of the generic drug industry was investigated. The effects of qualitative variables such as therapeutic category, duration of use, popularity, and market entry aggressiveness on the...

This paper studies how competition impacts innovative firms’ voluntary disclosure of product quality information. Our empirical context is the pharmaceutical industry, where firms must decide whether to disclose drug quality information acquired in clinical trials. Leveraging variation in...

In this chapter we review issues relating to antitrust and competition in health care markets. The chapter begins with a brief review of antitrust legislation. We then discuss whether and how health care is different from other industries in ways that might affect the optimality of competition....

Patent expiration represents a turning point for the brand losing patent protection as bioequivalent generic versions of the drug quickly enter the market at reduced prices. In this paper, we study how physician characteristics and their prescribing decisions impact the competition among...

This Article addresses hospitals' use of economic criteria to determine a physician's qualifications for staff privileges. Hospitals are resorting to economic conflict-of-interest credentialing policies in an attempt to ensure physicians' loyalty and mantain their own economic viability....