Different Outcomes and Settings
The goal for today’s class is to consider other outcomes where competition may play a role (not just price) and some specific settings where competition may work differently. We’ll focus on the following areas and papers for today’s class.
Competition and Quality
While most studies focus on the relationship between competition and price, there is a growing literature on the relationship between competition and quality. We’ll discuss Gaynor, Moreno-Serra, and Propper (2013) and Barker, Watt, and Tranmer (2022) as examples of work in this area.
Competition and Other Outcomess
In addition to prices and quality, competition can influence hospitals in many different ways. Eliason et al. (2020) studies mergers in the context of dialysis (effectively this is a study of market power and quality, they look at specific treatment decisions that happen to be negatively correlated with quality). Craig, Grennan, and Swanson (2021) studies the effect of mergers on bargaining power for high-price inputs (medicald devices, in this case).
Competition in Rural Settings
In the U.S., rural hospitals have struggled in recent years, with many hospitals closing. Understanding the effects of such closures and what we might want to do about it is an active area of policy interest. We’ll discuss Carroll et al. (2023) as a review of this clinical setting, and Fischer, Royer, and White (2024) as a recent paper in this area.