Hospitals are currently under pressure to control the cost of medical care, while at the same time improving patient health outcomes. These twin concerns are at play in an important and contentious decision facing hospitals--choosing appropriate nurse staffing levels. Intuitively, one would...

We use data from California to document and offer possible explanations for the sharp increase in hospital prices charged to private payers after 1999. We find a downward trend in price for private pay patients in the 1990s and a rapid upward trend beginning in 1999, amounting to an annual...

Recently, many U.S. employers have adopted less generous prescription drug benefits. In addition, the U.S. began to offer prescription drug insurance to approximately 42 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2006. We use data on individual health insurance claims and benefit data from 1997-2003 to...

We examine the evolving structure of the U.S. hospital industry since 1970, focusing on how ownership form influences entry and exit behavior. We develop theoretical predictions based on the model of Lakdawalla and Philipson, in which for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals differ regarding...

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...

We use the 1996 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to estimate a model of household demand for employer-based health insurance, explicitly investigating differences in behavior between households with two potential sources of coverage and those with one source. Own and cross-price elasticities are...

We study the effect of physician incentives in an HMO network. Physician incentives are controversial because they may induce doctors to make treatment decisions that differ from those they would chose in the absence of incentives. We set out a theoretical framework for assessing the degree to...

The nature, and normative properties, of competition in health care markets has long been the subject of much debate. In particular, policymakers have exhibited a great deal of reservation toward competition in health care markets, as demonstrated by the plethora of regulations governing the...

The health care industry is being transformed. Large firms are merging and acquiring other firms. Alliances and contractual relations between players in this market are shifting rapidly. Within the next few years, many markets are predicted to be dominated by a few large firms. Antitrust...

This paper incorporates the sociological concept of group norms' into an economic analysis of pay systems. We use a behavioral microeconomic model and a unique survey of medical groups to examine the theoretical and empirical relationship between group norms and incentive pay. Our findings...