Oliver Williamson frequently told his students to ask, “what is going on here?” That question, for him, epitomized his open-ended, pluralist, and exploratory research method, which he often contrasted to more self-confident versions of academic orthodoxy. He believed that this approach,...

Contract theory offers a simple and wildly effective solution to surprise bills: Hospital admissions contracts are contracts with open price terms, which contract law imputes with market rates. This solution not only obviated the costly, time-consuming, and complicated (and still unimplemented)...

Even though the U.S. healthcare system exhibits higher administrative costs than any other OECD nation, they have not received substantial attention from policymakers despite their enormous cost and impact on the market. We argue that competition policy could meaningfully reduce these...

Health care providers with market power enjoy substantially more pricing freedom than monopolists in other markets, for a reason not generally recognized: US-style health insurance. Consequently, monopolies in health care cause undesirable redistribution of wealth and inefficient allocation of...

The wave of new Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), spurred by financial incentives in the Affordable Care Act, could become the latest chapter in the steady accumulation of market power by hospitals, health care systems, and physician groups. The main purpose behind forming many ACOs may not...

U.S. hospitals and physicians regularly charge uninsured patients and patients receiving care outside their health-plan networks far more what most health insurers pay and far more than their actual costs. Such practices have triggered over 100 lawsuits and prompted calls for pricing...

For a reason not generally recognized – U.S.-style health insurance – health care providers with market power enjoy substantially more pricing freedom than comparable monopolists in other markets. Monopoly in health care markets therefore has redistributive effects that are especially...

Public choice theory sheds light on many aspects of legislation, regulation, and constitutional law and is critical to a sophisticated understanding of public policy. The editors of this landmark addition to the law and economics literature have organized the Handbook into four main areas of...

"This paper discusses the fundamental underpinnings and some implications of transaction cost regulation (TCR), a framework to analyze the interaction between governments and investors fundamentally, but not exclusively, in utility industries. TCR sees regulation as the governance structure of...