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,...

Small-area-variation studies have shown that physician treatment styles differ substantially both between and within markets, controlling for patient characteristics. Using a data set containing the universe of deliveries in Florida over a 12-year period with consistent physician identifiers and...

We examine the determinants and effects of M&A activity in the pharmaceutical|biotechnology industry using SDC data on 383 firms from 1988 to 2001. For large firms, mergers are a response to expected excess capacity due to patent expirations and gaps in a firm's product pipeline. For small...

This paper considers physician agency in choosing drugs to treat metastatic breast cancer, a clinical setting in which patients have few protections from physicians’ rent seeking. Physicians have explicit financial incentives attached to each potential drug treatment, with profit margins...

<Emphasis Type="Bold">Background: To limit quickly rising prescription drug expenditures, many state Medicaid programmes have implemented preferred drug lists (PDLs) and prior authorisation (PA). Lessons from Medicaid efforts may be informative for Medicare, which started covering outpatient prescription drugs...</emphasis>

There is very little known about health care utilization among the homeless or about the role of health insurance on utilization patterns. Many health care reform proposals advocate expanding health insurance coverage for various segments of society, including the homeless. Although homeless...

Most studies on the indirect costs of an illness and the cost effectiveness of a medical intervention or employer-sponsored wellness program assume that the value of reducing the number of days employees miss from work due to illness is the wage rate. This paper presents a general model to...

There is very little known about health care utilization among the homeless or about the role of health insurance on utilization patterns. Many health care reform proposals advocate expanding health insurance coverage for various segments of society, including the homeless. Although homeless...

Using data from a survey of 800 managers in 12 industries, we find empirical support for the hypothesis that the cost associated with missed work varies across jobs according to the ease with which a manager can find a perfect replacement for the absent worker, the extent to which the worker...