IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jemstr/v3y1994i1p53-70.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Excessive Investment in Hospital Capacities

Author

Listed:
  • Gal-Or, Esther

Abstract

In the present study I identify an inherent characteristic of health care markets that may lead to excessive investment by hospitals even when compensated according to a prospective reimbursement rule. It is demonstrated that the stochastic nature of the demand for medical services combined with the lumpiness of investment decisions may give rise to excessive investment when multiple hospitals select independently their levels of capacities. The source for the excessive incentives to invest is the difficulty of one hospital to internalize properly the externality generated by its investment decisions. Such an externality arises because when one hospital expands its capacity, it is more likely to be able to serve not only patients residing in its region but patients residing in neighboring regions as well. Copyright 1994 by MIT Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Gal-Or, Esther, 1994. "Excessive Investment in Hospital Capacities," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 53-70, Spring.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:3:y:1994:i:1:p:53-70
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1430-9134.1994.00053.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul L. Joskow, 1980. "The Effects of Competition and Regulation on Hospital Bed Supply and the Reservation Quality of the Hospital," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 11(2), pages 421-447, Autumn.
    2. Robert W. Staiger & Frank A. Wolak, 1992. "Collusive Pricing with Capacity Constraints in the Presence of Demand Uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 23(2), pages 203-220, Summer.
    3. Sloan, Frank A & Steinwald, Bruce, 1980. "Effects of Regulation on Hospital Costs and Input Use," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 23(1), pages 81-109, April.
    4. Friedman, Bernard & Pauly, Mark, 1981. "Cost Functions for a Service Firm with Variable Quality and Stochastic Demand: The Case of Hospitals," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 63(4), pages 620-624, November.
    5. A. Michael Spence, 1977. "Entry, Capacity, Investment and Oligopolistic Pricing," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(2), pages 534-544, Autumn.
    6. Joseph P. Newhouse, 1992. "Medical Care Costs: How Much Welfare Loss?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(3), pages 3-21, Summer.
    7. Weisbrod, Burton A, 1991. "The Health Care Quadrilemma: An Essay on Technological Change, Insurance, Quality of Care, and Cost Containment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(2), pages 523-552, June.
    8. David M. Kreps & Jose A. Scheinkman, 1983. "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(2), pages 326-337, Autumn.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Rajiv Sharma & Miron Stano & Renu Gehring, 2008. "Short‐term fluctuations in hospital demand: implications for admission, discharge, and discriminatory behavior," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(2), pages 586-606, June.
    2. Alexandre Marinho, 2015. "The Process of Public Resources Allocation for Investment in Hospital Capacities," Discussion Papers 0121, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    3. Bos, Dieter & De Fraja, Gianni, 2002. "Quality and outside capacity in the provision of health services," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 199-218, May.
    4. De Fraja, Gianni, 2000. "Contracts for health care and asymmetric information," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(5), pages 663-677, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bergman, Mats A., 1998. "Endogenous Timing of Investments Yields Modified Stackelberg Outcomes," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 272, Stockholm School of Economics.
    2. Farasat A.S. Bokhari, 2001. "Managed Care and the Adoption of Hospital Technology: The Case of Cardiac Catheterization," HEW 0110001, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. David Besanko & Ulrich Doraszelski & Lauren Xiaoyuan Lu & Mark Satterthwaite, 2010. "Lumpy Capacity Investment and Disinvestment Dynamics," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 58(4-part-2), pages 1178-1193, August.
    4. Soderbery, Anson, 2014. "Market size, structure, and access: Trade with capacity constraints," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 276-298.
    5. Kurt Hornschild & Stephan Raab & Jörg-Peter Weiß, 2005. "Die Medizintechnik am Standort Deutschland: Chancen und Risiken durch technologische Innovationen, Auswirkungen auf und durch das nationale Gesundheitssystem sowie potentielle Wachstumsmärkte im Ausla," DIW Berlin: Politikberatung kompakt, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, edition 2, volume 10, number pbk10.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Amy Finkelstein, 2008. "Input and Technology Choices in Regulated Industries: Evidence from the Health Care Sector," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(5), pages 837-880, October.
    7. Wasem, Jurgen, 1997. "A study on decentralizing from acute care to home care settings in Germany," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(Supplemen), pages 109-129, September.
    8. de Frutos, María-Ángeles & Fabra, Natalia, 2011. "Endogenous capacities and price competition: The role of demand uncertainty," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 399-411, July.
    9. Bagwell, Kyle & Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Game theory and industrial organization," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 49, pages 1851-1895, Elsevier.
    10. Jacques H. Drèze, 1997. "Sur la spécificité économique des soins de santé," Économie et Prévision, Programme National Persée, vol. 129(3), pages 1-9.
    11. Marie-Laure Cabon-Dhersin & Nicolas Drouhin, 2020. "A general model of price competition with soft capacity constraints," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(1), pages 95-120, July.
    12. Djellal, Faridah & Gallouj, FaIz, 2005. "Mapping innovation dynamics in hospitals," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 817-835, August.
    13. Laurence Baker & Joanne Spetz, 1999. "Managed Care and Medical Technology Growth," NBER Chapters, in: Frontiers in Health Policy Research, volume 2, pages 27-52, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Le Coq, Chloé & Sturluson, Jon Thor, 2012. "Does opponents’ experience matter? Experimental evidence from a quantity precommitment game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 265-277.
    15. Allen N. Berger & Astrid A. Dick, 2007. "Entry into Banking Markets and the Early‐Mover Advantage," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 39(4), pages 775-807, June.
    16. Borger, Christine & Rutherford, Thomas F. & Won, Gregory Y., 2008. "Projecting long term medical spending growth," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 69-88, January.
    17. Siciliani, Luigi & Stanciole, Anderson & Jacobs, Rowena, 2009. "Do waiting times reduce hospital costs?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 771-780, July.
    18. Laurence C. Baker, 2000. "Managed Care and Technology Adoption in Health Care: Evidence from Magnetic Resonance Imaging," NBER Working Papers 8020, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Karine Lamiraud & Stephane Lhuillery, 2016. "Endogenous Technology Adoption and Medical Costs," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 1123-1147, September.
    20. Kyle Hampton & Katerina Sherstyuk, 2012. "Demand shocks, capacity coordination, and industry performance: lessons from an economic laboratory," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(1), pages 139-166, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:3:y:1994:i:1:p:53-70. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/journals/JEMS/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.