Regulatory entry barriers to hospital service markets, namely Certificate of Need (CON) regulations, are enforced in many states; although no longer federally mandated, policy makers in other states are considering reinstating CON policies in tandem with service expansions mandated under the...

Reasonable and equitable water resource decision-making is at the core of good governance around the world. Sustained water collaboration is an antidote to foreign relations disintegration. Lack of water quality and quantity policies can lead to water insecurity for everyone, yet bureaucratic...

In 2002, New Zealand's government-funded primary health care payments were changed from a fee-for-service basis to a capitation basis as part of a change towards a population-based, managed care style of primary health care provision. However, some specific differences characterise the New...

There's a widespread perception that transparent pricing would push healthcare prices downward. While this may be true in certain markets, in many others, it would have little price impact or could even push prices upward via tacit collusion. Under perfect competition, prices are universally...

A popularly-held tenet in health economics is that, as a consequence of the presence of insurance subsidies for treatment costs, health care markets differ so significantly from hypothetical 'perfect competition' that competition and antitrust laws possibly should not be enforced in health care...

Our objective is to determine the effect of ownership type (for-profit, not-for-profit, government) on firm conduct in hospital markets. Secondary objectives include estimating hospital demand systems useful for market definition and merger simulation. To this end, we estimate a structural model...

As the healthcare sector grows in significance due to social and technical developments the EU competition rules are likely to be more frequently applied to healthcare both as a result of the broad interpretation of the concept of undertaking and because the applicable antitrust rules are since...

We test whether firms use incompatibility strategically, using data from ATM markets. High ATM fees degrade the value of competitors' deposit accounts, and can in principle serve as a mechanism for siphoning depositors away from competitors or for creating deposit account differentiation. Our...

This paper analyzes the concept of barriers to entry. It explains that the concept is a static one and explores the inadequacy of the concept in a world with sunk costs, adjustment costs and uncertainty. The static concept addresses the question of whether profits are excessive. The more...

The trickle of business method patents issued by the United States Patent Office became a flood after the State Street Bank decision in 1998. Many scholars, both legal and economic, have critiqued both the quality of these patents and the decision itself. This paper discusses the likely impact...