-
作者:McDevitt, Ryan C.; Roberts, James W.
作者单位:Duke University; National Bureau of Economic Research
摘要:We consider the relationship between market structure and health outcomes in a setting where patients have stark preferences: urology patients disproportionately match with a urologist of the same gender. In the United States, however, fewer than 6% of urologists are women despite women constituting 30% of patients. We explain a portion of this disparity with a model of imperfect competition in which urology groups strategically differentiate themselves by employing female urologists. These st...
-
作者:Jin, Ginger Zhe; Lee, Jungmin
作者单位:University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park; National Bureau of Economic Research; Sogang University
摘要:In this article, we show that a small innovation in inspection technology can make substantial differences in inspection outcomes. For restaurant hygiene inspections, the state of Florida has introduced a handheld electronic device, the portable digital assistant (PDA), which reminds inspectors of about 1,000 potential violations that may be checked for. Using inspection records from July 2003 to June 2009, we find that the adoption of PDA led to 11% more detected violations and subsequently, ...
-
作者:Copeland, Adam
作者单位:Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - New York
摘要:This article presents a dynamic demand model for motor vehicles. This approach accounts for the change in the mix of consumers over the model year and measures consumers' substitution patterns across products and time. I find intertemporal substitution is significant; consumers are more likely to change the timing of their purchase in reaction to a price increase rather than buy another vehicle in the same period. Further, I find automakers' use of large cash-back rebates at the end of the mod...
-
作者:Georgiadis, George; Lippman, Steven A.; Tang, Christopher S.
作者单位:California Institute of Technology; Boston University; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
摘要:We study the interaction between a group of agents who exert effort to complete a project and a manager who chooses its objectives. The manager has limited commitment power so that she can commit to the objectives only when the project is sufficiently close to completion. We show that the manager has incentives to extend the project as it progresses. This result has two implications. First, the manager will choose a larger project if she has less commitment power. Second, the manager should de...
-
作者:Hermalin, Benjamin E.
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Berkeley
摘要:A seller can make investments that affect a tradable asset's future returns. The potential buyer of the asset cannot observe the seller's investment prior to trade, nor does he receive any signal of it, nor can he verify it in any way after trade. Despite this severe moral-hazard problem, this article shows the seller will invest with positive probability in equilibrium and that trade will occur with positive probability. The outcome of the game is sensitive to the distribution of bargaining p...
-
作者:Daughety, Andrew F.; Reinganum, Jennifer F.
作者单位:Vanderbilt University
摘要:Over the last eight centuries, lawyers in common law countries have generally been precluded from buying their clients' cases. Recently, a number of economists and lawyers have argued that sale should be allowed so as to eliminate moral hazard, particularly when contingent fees are used; this argument is based on full-information reasoning. However, if the lawyer has private information about the case value, then compensation demands potentially signal this value when the client can search ove...
-
作者:Krishna, R. Vijay; Lopomo, Giuseppe; Taylor, Curtis R.
作者单位:University of North Carolina; University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; Duke University
摘要:We study a setting in which a principal contracts with an agent to operate a firm over an infinite time horizon when the agent is liquidity constrained and privately observes the sequence of cost realizations. We formulate the principal's problem as a dynamic program in which the state variable is the agent's continuation utility, which is naturally interpreted as his equity in the firm. The optimal incentive scheme resembles what is commonly regarded as a sweat equity contract, with all rents...
-
作者:Hummel, Patrick; Morgan, John; Stocken, Phillip C.
作者单位:Alphabet Inc.; Google Incorporated; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; Dartmouth College
摘要:A firm surveys a large number of consumers, some of whom sincerely report their tastes and others of whom report strategically. It makes product decisions using the sample mean of survey responses. When firms and consumers agree on the fraction of sincere consumers, information loss is severe, and many products are flops as they poorly match consumer tastes. When beliefs differ, however, equilibrium is in linear strategies, and information aggregates. Despite this, flops still arise. A firm, h...
-
作者:Moraga-Gonzalez, Jose L.; Petrikaite, Vaiva
作者单位:Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; University of Groningen; Tinbergen Institute; University of Navarra
摘要:We study the incentives to merge and the aggregate implications of mergers in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiated products and consumers search sequentially for satisfactory deals. When search frictions are substantial, firms have an incentive to merge and to retail their products within a single store, which induces consumers to begin their search there. Such a merger lowers the profits of the outsiders and may benefit consumers due to more efficient search. Overall w...
-
作者:Lee, Jinhyung; McCullough, Jeffrey S.; Town, Robert J.
作者单位:Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU); University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; University of Pennsylvania
摘要:Health information technology (IT) has been championed as a tool that can transform health care delivery. We estimate the parameters of a value-added hospital production function correcting for endogenous input choices to assess the private returns hospitals earn from health IT. Despite high marginal products, the total benefits from expanded IT adoption are modest. Over the span of our data, health IT inputs increased by more than 210% and contributed about 6% to the increase in value-added. ...