This paper examines the competition of nonprofit sickness funds in the market for supplementary health insurance. We investigate product quality strategies when quality is costly and the sickness funds are competing for customers. As long as the sickness funds choose the qualities for...

Vertical integration in the health sector refers to the government structure designed to coordinate and control attention services in the different states of the value chain, and to facilitate the collaboration and communication between the suppliers. In Colombia, the vertical integration allows...

The relationship between physicians and hospitals has dramatically changed over the last decade, with the employer-employee model supplanting the traditional model of private physicians with hospital admitting privileges. We examine the motivation for this form of vertical integration by...

This paper investigates the benefits of a merger when goods are complements and firms behave in a Cournot manner both in a theoretical model as well as in a real-world application. In a setting of two complementary duopolies a merger between two firms each producing one of the goods always...

We develop a partial equilibrium, perfectly competitive framework of a (potentially) vertically oriented industry. There are three types of firms: Upstream firms that use primary factors to produce an intermediate; downstream firms that use primary factors and intermediates to produce a final...

We analyze health care option demand markets with vertical restraints divided along two dimensions: naked and conditional exclusion, and vertical integration; applicable to the upstream, the downstream, and both markets. Our unified framework includes forward and backward integration, and joint...