IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3567.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Quality Adjusted Cost Functions

Author

Listed:
  • Paul J. Gertler
  • Donald M. Waldman

Abstract

We propose a simple method for estimating cost functions in the presence of endogenous and unobserved quality. The theory of production, the equilibrium conditions implied by optimizing behavior, and exogenous influences on product demand are used to identify the model. An important advantage of the method is that the data requirements, above those necessary for standard cost function estimation, are minimal and the data are usually readily available. Specifically, exogenous information that influences the demand for the firm's product is required. We apply this method to estimate quality-adjusted cost functions in the nursing home industry. Estimation of a translog cost function that ignores quality yields seriously misleading estimates of marginal cost and economies of scale. In particular, while estimation of a quality-exogenous cost function reports economies of scale, estimation of a quality adjusted cost function reveals diseconomies of scale for high quality homes, constant returns to scale for average quality homes, and economies of scale for low quality homes.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul J. Gertler & Donald M. Waldman, 1990. "Quality Adjusted Cost Functions," NBER Working Papers 3567, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3567
    Note: EH
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3567.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melvyn A. Fuss & Leonard Waverman, 1981. "Regulation and the Multiproduct Firm: The Case of Telecommunications in Canada," NBER Chapters, in: Studies in Public Regulation, pages 277-328, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Gertler, Paul J, 1988. "A Latent-Variable Model of Quality Determination," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 6(1), pages 97-104, January.
    3. 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.
    4. Braeutigam, Ronald R & Daughety, Andrew F & Turnquist, Mark A, 1984. "A Firm Specific Analysis of Economies of Density in the U.S. Railroad Industry," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 3-20, September.
    5. Braeutigam, Ronald R & Daughety, Andrew F & Turnquist, Mark A, 1982. "The Estimation of a Hybrid Cost Function for a Railroad Firm," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 64(3), pages 394-404, August.
    6. Nyman, John A., 1985. "Prospective and `cost-plus' medicaid reimbursement, excess medicaid demand, and the quality of nursing home care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 237-259, September.
    7. Lawrence J. White, 1972. "Quality Variation When Prices Are Regulated," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 3(2), pages 425-436, Autumn.
    8. Richard Schmalensee, 1977. "Comparative Static Properties of Regulated Airline Oligopolies," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 8(2), pages 565-576, Autumn.
    9. Ronald R. Braeutigam & Mark V. Pauly, 1986. "Cost Function Estimation and Quality Bias: The Regulated Automobile Insurance Industry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(4), pages 606-617, Winter.
    10. Rosen, Sherwin, 1974. "Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(1), pages 34-55, Jan.-Feb..
    11. Brown, James N & Rosen, Harvey S, 1982. "On the Estimation of Structural Hedonic Price Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(3), pages 765-768, May.
    12. Leffler, Keith B, 1982. "Ambiguous Changes in Product Quality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(5), pages 956-967, December.
    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. Joseph P. Hughes & Loretta J. Mester, "undated". "Evidence on the Objectives of Bank Managers," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 4-94, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
    2. David C. Grabowski & Jonathan Gruber & Joseph J. Angelelli, 2006. "Nursing Home Quality as a Public Good," NBER Working Papers 12361, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Dan Friesner & Robert Rosenman, 2004. "Non-profit cost-adjusting with quality as a private good," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(5), pages 511-523.
    4. Ralph Bradley, 1994. "Growth Of U.S. Health Care Spending," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 12(4), pages 45-56, October.
    5. Darius Lakdawalla & Tomas Philipson, 1998. "Nonprofit Production and Competition," NBER Working Papers 6377, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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. Zhong, Zhen & Chen, Shufen & Kong, Xiangzhi & Tracy, Megan, 2014. "Why improving agrifood quality is difficult in China: Evidence from dairy industry," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 74-83.
    2. Paul J. Gertler, 1989. "Medicaid and the Cost of Improving Access to Nursing Home Care," NBER Working Papers 2851, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Victor Manuel Bennett & Lamar Pierce & Jason A. Snyder & Michael W. Toffel, 2013. "Customer-Driven Misconduct: How Competition Corrupts Business Practices," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1725-1742, August.
    4. Lucija Muehlenbachs & Elisheba Spiller & Christopher Timmins, 2015. "The Housing Market Impacts of Shale Gas Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3633-3659, December.
    5. Brasington, D. M., 2003. "The supply of public school quality," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 367-377, August.
    6. David M. Brasington & Diane Hite, 2005. "Demand for Environmental Quality: A Spatial Hedonic Approach," Departmental Working Papers 2005-08, Department of Economics, Louisiana State University.
    7. Fève, Frédérique & Fève, Patrick & Florens, Jean-Pierre, 2002. "Attribute Choices and Structural Econometrics of Price Elasticity of Demand," IDEI Working Papers 155, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised 2003.
    8. Kilmer, Richard L. & Armbruster, Walter J., 1984. "Methods For Evaluating Economic Efficiency In Agricultural Marketing," Southern Journal of Agricultural Economics, Southern Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 16(01), pages 1-9, July.
    9. Patrick Bayer & Robert McMillan & Kim Rueben, 2004. "An Equilibrium Model of Sorting in an Urban Housing Market," NBER Working Papers 10865, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Jesper de Groote & Jos van Ommeren & Hans R. A. Koster, 2018. "The Impact of Parking Policy on House Prices," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, University of Bath, vol. 52(3), pages 267-26-282.
    11. Christopher R. Gustafson & Travis J. Lybbert & Daniel A. Sumner, 2016. "Consumer sorting and hedonic valuation of wine attributes: exploiting data from a field experiment," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 47(1), pages 91-103, January.
    12. Martin Gaynor, "undated". "What Do We Know About Competition and Quality in Health Care Markets?," GSIA Working Papers 2006-E62, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    13. Zhang, Congwen & Boyle, Kevin J. & Kuminoff, Nicolai V., 2015. "Partial identification of amenity demand functions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 180-197.
    14. Sylvain M. Prado, 2009. "The European used-car market at a glance: Hedonic resale price valuation in automotive leasing industry," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(3), pages 2086-2099.
    15. Pierre-Charles Pradier & François Gardes & Xavier Greffe & Ileana Miranda Mendoza, 2016. "Autographs and the global art market: the case of hedonic prices for French autographs (1960–2005)," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 40(4), pages 453-485, November.
    16. Arnaud Dupuy & Alfred Galicho & Marc Henry, 2014. "Entropy methods for identifying hedonic models," Working Papers 2014/21, Maastricht School of Management.
    17. Muriel Travers & Abdelhak Nassiri & Gildas Appéré & François Bonnieux, 2008. "Évaluation des bénéfices environnementaux par la méthode des prix hédonistes : une application au cas du littoral," Economie & Prévision, La Documentation Française, vol. 0(4), pages 47-62.
    18. Kenneth Y. Chay & Michael Greenstone, 2005. "Does Air Quality Matter? Evidence from the Housing Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 376-424, April.
    19. Steve Gibbons & Stephan Heblich & Esther Lho & Christopher Timmins, 2016. "Fear of Fracking? The Impact of the Shale Gas Exploration on House Prices in Britain," SERC Discussion Papers 0207, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    20. Tracey Seslen & William C. Wheaton & Henry O. Pollakowksi, 2005. "The Investment Performance of Housing and "Hedonic" Spatial Equilibrium," Working Paper 8583, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate.

    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:nbr:nberwo:3567. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.