Does Market Power Encourage or Discourage Investment? Evidence from the Hospital Market

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-698
Author(s):  
Elena Patel ◽  
Nathan Seegert
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Hospital Market

Countervailing Market Power and Hospital Competition

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Eric Barrette ◽  
Gautam Gowrisankaran ◽  
Robert Town
Keyword(s):  
Willingness To Pay ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Claims Data ◽  
Antitrust Policy ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Hospital Competition ◽  
Hospital Market ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Hospital Merger

While economic theories indicate that market power by downstream firms can potentially counteract market power upstream, antitrust policy is opaque about whether to incorporate countervailing market power in merger analyses. We use detailed national claims data from the healthcare sector to evaluate whether countervailing insurer power does indeed limit hospitals' exercise of market power. We estimate willingness-to-pay models to evaluate hospital market power across analysis areas. We find that countervailing market power is important: a typical hospital merger would raise hospital prices 4.3% at the 25th percentile of insurer concentration but only 0.97% at the 75th percentile of insurer concentration.

scholarly journals Does Health Plan Generosity Enhance Hospital Market Power?

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Baker ◽  
M. Kate Bundorf ◽  
Daniel Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Health Plan ◽  
Hospital Market

scholarly journals Does health plan generosity enhance hospital market power?

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 54-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence C. Baker ◽  
M. Kate Bundorf ◽  
Daniel P. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Health Plan ◽  
Hospital Market

Vertical Boilerplate

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Market Power ◽  
Real World ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Law School ◽  
Information Cost ◽  
Information Costs ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Radical Solution

Despite what we learn in law school about the “meeting of the minds,” most contracts are merely boilerplate—take-it-or-leave-it propositions. Negotiation is nonexistent; we rely on our collective market power as consumers to regulate contracts’ content. But boilerplate imposes certain information costs because it often arrives late in the transaction and is hard to understand. If those costs get too high, then the market mechanism fails. So how high are boilerplate’s information costs? A few studies have attempted to measure them, but they all use a “horizontal” approach—i.e., they sample a single stratum of boilerplate and assume that it represents the whole transaction. Yet real-world transactions often involve multiple layers of contracts, each with its own information costs. What is needed, then, is a “vertical” analysis, a study that examines fewer contracts of any one kind but tracks all the contracts the consumer encounters, soup to nuts. This Article presents the first vertical study of boilerplate. It casts serious doubt on the market mechanism and shows that existing scholarship fails to appreciate the full scale of the information cost problem. It then offers two regulatory solutions. The first works within contract law’s unconscionability doctrine, tweaking what the parties need to prove and who bears the burden of proving it. The second, more radical solution involves forcing both sellers and consumers to confront and minimize boilerplate’s information costs—an approach I call “forced salience.” In the end, the boilerplate experience is as deep as it is wide. Our empirical work should reflect that fact, and our policy proposals should too.

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