We study how individuals with private health insurance choose providers for lower-limb MRI scans. Lower-limb MRI scans are a fairly undifferentiated service and providers' prices routinely vary by a factor of five or more across providers within hospital referral regions. We observe that despite...

Hospitals and physicians independently negotiate contracts with insurers. As a result, a privately insured individual can attend an in-network hospital emergency department, but receive care and potentially a large, unexpected bill from an out-of-network emergency physician working at that...

I use variation in approval time for generic drugs to shed light on the objectives of the federal agency in charge of granting entry permission for these drugs (FDA). Applications belonging to firms later found to have engaged in fraud or corruption were approved nine months faster on average,...

In 1990 the Federal Government included a Most Favored Customer (MFC) clause in the contract (OBRA 90) which would govern the prices paid to firms for pharmaceutical products supplied to Medicaid recipients. The firms had to give Medicaid their best (lowest) price in some cases, a percentage...

I examine the outcomes of cases of entry by merchant shipping lines into established markets around the turn of the century. These established markets are completely dominated by an incumbent cartel composed of several member shipping lines. The cartel makes the decision whether or not to begin...

We analyze whether receiving care from higher-priced hospitals leads to lower mortality. We overcome selection issues by using an instrumental variable approach which exploits that ambulance companies are quasi-randomly assigned to transport patients and have strong preferences for certain...