This paper explores potential realization of gains by hospitals that are managed on a day-to-day basis by external organizations under formal contracts. It draws from the incentives literature, which postulates that managers of firms where ownership is separated from control will employ an input...

This paper explores changes in traditional commodity programs from the perspective of domestic welfare. A theoretical model was developed which describes domestic welfare changes that follow from policies consistent with reductions in international price distortions. The model was applied to the...

This article compares the strategic announcement of a reservation price by a bid-taking buyer in a first-price sealed bid auction with the strategy of no announcement. Simulation results indicate that an operative ceiling price that is unknown to bidders will yield lower supply costs to the...

This paper presents new estimates of scale economies for US hospitals. We show that the common translog specification of hospital costs is a misspecification, and employ nonparametric, local linear estimation with both continuous and discrete covariates. A bootstrap method is used to provide...

This paper addresses the issue of hospital bed capacity by considering the stochastic demand for United States hospitals. An equilibrium condition for the optimal number of "excess" beds is derived and applied using a cost function estimated with a panel data model for the period 1987-1992....

This paper estimates a multiple-output hospital cost function using a panel data technique that allows for correlation between unobservable individual effects and observable determinants of behavior. Analysis of 1733 facilities for the period of 1987-1991 yields estimates that differ widely from...

In recent years, concern in the United States over rising health care costs has led to precipitous reductions in the lengths of hospitalizations. While perceptions of compromised medical care quality following this practice and others have prompted policy makers to consider stricter regulation...

A moratorium in the US on referrals of Medicare and Medicaid patients to new cardiac, orthopedic, or surgical specialty hospitals by physician-investors was recently lifted, yet the considerable controversy stirred by this growing hospital organizational form continues. This paper calls...