Our understanding of the determinants of physician skill and the extent to which skill is valued in the marketplace is superficial. Using a large, detailed panel of new obstetricians, we find that, even though physicians' maternal complication rates improve steadily with years of practice,...

"Professional partnerships might facilitate matching between specialized professionals and heterogeneous consumers, particularly where matching across firms is limited by information, incentives or regulation. We examine the extent to which internally-differentiated medical groups promote...

This paper examines the determinants of M&A activity in the pharmaceutical-biotechnology industry and the effects of mergers using propensity scores to control for merger endogeneity. Among large firms, we find that mergers are a response to excess capacity due to anticipated patent expirations...

Theory indicates that internally-differentiated professional partnerships can promote matching between heterogeneous consumers and professionals, particularly when consumers have imperfect information or markets have barriers to referrals between firms. We test this in obstetrics markets,...