Health care markets fail to satisfy many requirements for perfect competition, including large numbers of consumers and firms, zero search costs, and marketability of all goods and services. Over time, health care markets have evolved to overcome the resulting inefficiencies. We combine the...

The for-profit hospital is in the minority numerically in all developed countries. Although the for-profits' market share has been quite stable for decades, for-profit chains have grown in share and influence in the United States. By contrast, for-profit chains have made few inroads in other...

This chapter summarizes recent theoretical and empirical economic research on long-term care. Long-term care differs from acute medical care in four fundamental ways. Long-term care is care for chronic illness, the nursing home industry is dominated by for-profit facilities sometimes facing...

This Handbook chapter surveys the extensive body of research on the economics of the pharmaceutical industry (with peripheral attention paid also to regulated medical devices). Pharmaceuticals is one of the world's most research-intensive industries, generating a continuing steam of new products...

The aim of medical innovations is to improve health. A medical innovation can be defined as the application of new medical knowledge, often but not always embodied in a product, for example a pharmaceutical drug. Improved medical knowledge is the product of investments in medical research and/or...