Economic Issues in the Antitrust Assessment of Hospital Competition: Overview

Rapid consolidation in the hospital industry, as health care markets respond to consumer pressures for more cost-effective delivery of health care services, has focused increased attention on antitrust enforcement theories and actions. This paper reviews the Federal agency challenges of four recent hospital mergers that have all been denied by the courts, but for varying reasons. Questions raised include the appropriate definition of the product and geographic markets, the extent of realizable merger-specific efficiencies and the influence of non-profit status on hospital behavior. The lack of conclusive empirical economic evidence on these topics undoubtedly contributes to the current divergence of opinion among regulators, courts and hospitals. This paper also identifies how each of the subsequent papers in this special issue contributes valuable findings to inform the lively debate.     

Multistrategic Spatial Competition in Banking

This paper presents a model whereby banking firms use various strategies (price and non‐price) simultaneously in a monopolistically competitive model of spatial competition when the various strategies are used across different markets in the presence of a multioutput technology. The theoretical model is estimated with Spanish data pertaining to the pre‐ and post‐deregulatory periods in order to investigate the effects of deregulation of both interest rates and branches on the (differential) strategic conduct of private and savings bank.     

空间竞争、房价收入比与房价

本文通过构建一个房地产市场空间竞争模型,分别就Cournot竞争和价格合谋情形,探讨了开发商的位置及其密度如何影响均衡开发量、房价和社会福利.本文的基本结论是:空间竞争决定了房价,而非房价收入比;市场决定的价格不一定为合理性价格;房价与市中心距离和开发商密度成反比;空间垄断是房价刚性的根本原因.因此,要将刚性房价降下来,政府一方面应将大项目拆分为小项目,促进竞争,另一方面应对空间垄断进行管制.     

Unrestricted Entry and Nonprice Competition: The Case of Technological Adoption in Hospitals

Medical technology adoption is a major contributor to rising health care expenditures in the US. Multiple market failures provide incentives for hospitals to adopt technologies. Unrestricted entry may result in excess capacity and reductions in output that are inefficient with respect to cost and quality. We analyze the effects of hospital entry in the market for coronary artery bypass graft surgery on the number of procedures performed at both the market and firm levels, using California data from 1983 to 1990. We test the hypothesis that entry has differential effects on hospital output in a market with nonprice competition, depending on market structure. Results show that as the proximity of the nearest competitor increases with entry, hospital output declines. Holding distance to the nearest competitor constant, increasing the number of competitors results in a smaller, but still significant, decrease in output. When there are few incumbents nearby, however, output does not change significantly with entry, suggesting "business-augmenting" effects that result in increased physician referrals offset much of the conventional "businessstealing" effects.     

The Effects of Market Concentration and Horizontal Mergers on Hospital Costs and Prices

Antitrust advocates believe that horizontal consolidation in hospital markets can reduce competition and increase prices while merger advocates believe it can benefit consumers by reducing service duplication. This study analyzed the market conditions, operating characteristics, and costs and prices of approximately 3500 short-term general hospitals (including 112 within-market-area mergers) from 1986 to 1994 to investigate the effects of market concentration, hospital mergers, and managed care penetration. The results show: a shift away from non-price competition toward price competition in health care markets; that this shift was fueled by increased market penetration by price-sensitive buyers; that horizontal hospital mergers produced average cost savings of approximately 5%, which were generally passed on to consumers as lower prices; that cost savings were generally greater for mergers of similar-size hospitals, with a higher degree of duplicative services, and with lower pre-merger occupancy rates; and some evidence that post-merger price reductions were smaller in less-competitive markets.     

Competition,Cooperation and Regulatory Intervention Impacts on Independent School Fees

This paper examines the factors determining fee levels set by independent schools, focusing on the impact of competition, cooperation and regulatory intervention in the sector. Results indicate that, once account is taken of factors such as the extent of local competition between independent schools, the impact of the 2003–2005 Office of Fair Trading investigation into the fee-setting cartel on independent school fees becomes insignificant. Meanwhile, the extent of competition between independent schools has a significant effect on levels of boarding school fees. Results highlight the importance of considering pricing strategies of groups within a cartel.     

中国制造业的市场集中、地理集聚与企业绩效

本文研究我国制造业的市场结构与地理分布对企业全要素生产率的影响.以中国工业企业数据库的大样本数据为基础,采用LP法计算企业生产率,构造市场集中度指标和地方化经济、城市化经济两个集聚指标,进行了多方位的计量检验.研究结果表明,制造业的市场集中不利于企业生产率的提高,代表专业化水平的地方化经济促进了企业生产率的提升,度量行业间多样化集聚的城市化经济对企业生产率没有显著的影响.市场集中对出口企业的负面影响不明显,控制市场集中和地理集聚后,出口企业生产率高于非出口企业,出口的“生产率悖论”并不存在.     

Bank Competition and its Determinants: Evidence from Indian Banking

Abstract

This paper measures the degree of bank competition in India using a sample of 70 commercial banks over the period 1996–2016. To assess the degree of competition, we estimate the market power of each bank in our sample employing three nonstructural measures: the Lerner index, the adjusted Lerner index, and the Boone indicator. Bank-wise and year-wise estimates of the marginal cost required in all these measures are obtained using the semi-parametric method. The paper further attempts to undertake a comprehensive assessment of competition in Indian banking and identifies various bank-specific, macroeconomic, structural, and contestability indicators, which are supposed to explain level and variation of the degree of competition over time. Empirical findings reveal that public-sector banks in India exercise a relatively higher degree of bank competition compared to private and foreign-sector banks. However, aggregate results support that the Indian banking system is competitive in general. Unlike the structure-conduct-performance paradigm, which advocates that a concentrated banking system impairs competitiveness, our findings reveal that concentration measures hardly exert any effect on bank competition. Rather, contestability measures play a significant role in the determination of bank competition.     

Spatial competition and market power in banking

Banks in non-metropolitan areas compete in a spatially differentiated environment. Non-metro community banks have been insulated from increasing competition from metro banks due to their reliance on soft information in relationship lending. Proximity to borrowers, therefore, may be an important source of market power for non-metro community banks. This paper estimates a structural model of the supply and demand of banking services in which pricing power is allowed to depend explicitly on the distance between rival banks. A spatial autoregressive econometric model shows that approximately 38.0% of economic surplus earned by firms in non-metropolitan banking in the upper midwest is due to spatial market power.     

比较优势理论与期货市场竞争发展格局

期货市场是以现货市场为基础的衍生市场.根据比较优势及相关理论,期货市场的比较优势主要来自于所在国家或地区的要素条件、需求状况、竞争对手及产业政策.世界期货市场以及美国、欧洲、日本等国家或地区内期货市场竞争格局的变迁充分证明,具有比较优势的国家和地区或以具有比较优势的产业为基础的期货市场,在竞争中将因此而形成相应的比较优势.不同国家或地区间、一个国家或地区内期货市场所处的环境各不相同,因此发展期货市场必须根据所在国家或地区的环境特点,推行与之相适应的发展模式和产业政策,以形成自身的比较优势,在竞争中获取有利地位.     

全球交易所的竞争:市场结构的变化

本文运用国际金融市场特别是期货市场的统计数据和案例材料,从横向竞争、纵向竞争、会员资格的开放和会员的多样化、竞争的资本密集程度的提高这几个方面,总结了交易所面临的竞争挑战.对美国占全球期货市场份额变化的分析表明,传统金融市场强国逐步丧失了绝对的垄断地位.但全球期货期权交易市场集中度的提高,却揭示了当前交易所服务市场竞争格局的复杂性.     

出口相似度与贸易竞争:中国与东盟的比较研究

本文从商品域和市场域两个纬度测算了中国与东盟在自由贸易区之外的第三方市场(或世界市场)上的出口相似度指数.研究表明,中国与东盟出口结构(产品结构和市场结构)趋同态势越来越显著,它反映的是双方在产业转移和传递的国际分工格局调整中相似的演化路径,这意味着中国与东盟在出口上越来越强劲的竞争具有长期性.最后对中国-东盟自由贸易区前景进行了初探.     

Product Differentiation,Industry Concentration and Market Share Turbulence

Building on the current theory of industrial concentration, we analyze the relation between market size and product differentiation, and show how product differentiation impacts market share turbulence. We first propose that in markets where vertical product differentiation dominates, firms will have an incentive to escalate investment in advertising and/or R&D as market size increases. Secondly, such (firm‐specific) investments will make competitive advantage more sustainable as the firm is less imitable. This will not be the case if the market is primarily characterized by homogeneous products or horizontal product differentiation. Our predictions are tested using an original EU dataset for 1987 and 1997. Our results strongly support our predictions – the degree of market share turbulence increases with market size. However, this relation is weakened by competitive investment in advertising and R&D.     

Competition,agency and productivity

This article tests a set of hypotheses relating to agency and Schumpeterian views on how competition affects performance. A survey data set of Australian workplaces is used, with the change in labour productivity as the dependent variable. The results show strong support for the idea that intense competition raises productivity growth in managerial workplaces, but not in non‐managerial workplaces (i.e. where the principal owner also works). Testing the agency theories in more detail, we find no evidence that the number of competitors, the price elasticity of demand or a proxy for bankruptcy (pre‐tax losses) are the mechanisms behind the process. For non‐managerial workplaces the results indicate support for the idea that greater demand uncertainty reduces productivity growth. In contrast, for managerial workplaces, greater demand uncertainty tends to raise productivity growth.     

全球性竞争政策及其对我国的启示

竞争政策旨在保护和促进竞争,目前在这一领域的国际协调成效并不显著.随着经济全球化的深入发展,在世界范围内建立统一的竞争政策的要求日益迫切,在此背景下西方学者提出创建全球性竞争政策的观点,主张将竞争政策纳入多边贸易体制.竞争政策的国际化需要贸易政策等其他经济政策作出相应协调与配合.我国对全球性竞争政策的建立应采取积极态度,并以此为契机完善国内竞争体系,调整其他相关经济政策,在竞争中求发展.     

欧共体竞争法与欧洲经济一体化

欧洲共同体是在其成员国经济结构和发展水平存在着明显差距、私人垄断和国家垄断不断加强、各国保护竞争立法又有较大差异的背景下建立的,因此,在共同体大市场内制订统一的竞争法,是经济一体化的必然要求.欧洲经济一体化的不断深入,促使欧共体竞争法不断扩展其调整范围,完善其自身的制度和规则.欧共体竞争法的适用协调了成员国的竞争政策,建立了统一的竞争秩序;规范企业的竞争行为,促进了共同市场有序发展;禁止境外企业的不当竞争行为,创设了良好的国际发展环境,保障了经济一体化的健康、有序的发展.     

Competition, herd behavior, and credit cycles: evidence from major Swiss Banks

I use time-series analysis to investigate the dynamic interdependence of the credit supplies of the three major Swiss banks from 1987 to 1996. The statistical results document that all three banks reacted to their competitors’ changes in lending. The estimated individual credit supply functions are then used in counterfactual experiments to study the total lending of these three banks (which is roughly half the bank lending in Switzerland) under different assumptions regarding leader/follower behavior. These simulations highlight the role of competitive behavior for the persistence of aggregate credit cycles.     

Trade Liberalization,Nature of Mergers and Employment

This paper investigates the roles of comparative advantage and market size in the international location of manufacturing production. Building on the conventional Helpman and Krugman (1985) general equilibrium framework, our analysis extends the present literature by incorporating both effects in the same model, while allowing trade costs to vary almost continuously from autarky to free trade. The main result of our exercise is that market size effects offset comparative advantage if countries have similar factor proportions. A large country with a slight comparative disadvantage in manufacturing production may thus be a net exporter of manufactures. A small country with the same comparative disadvantage would be a net importer of manufactures. When countries are very dissimilar in their relative factor endowments, land-abundant countries specialize in the production of food, irrespective of market size, if manufactures are a labour-intensive sector. Labour-rich countries of any size are manufacture cores. However, land-abundant countries with large markets can sustain a domestic manufacturing industry until trade costs are very low, and in some cases only specialize in agriculture at free trade.     

Size, strategic, and market orientation affects on innovation

Based on a random sample of 500 South Yorkshire non-hi-tech manufacturing small, medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the quantitative findings support the hypothesis that size, strategic, and market orientation associate with innovation. The results show that prospectors are medium-sized companies and small companies, defenders. Prospectors are more innovative and market-oriented than defenders. The findings reveal that to succeed in an intense competitive environment, non-hi-tech manufacturing SMEs have to be proactive toward market opportunities, receptive to innovation and take the lead in new product innovation. However, their weaknesses include a lack of flexibility, a partial open culture and an organizational structure that impedes sustained innovation. This study addresses a gap in the literature, by linking innovation to the strategic orientation of the firm instead of examining firms' specific characteristics or the effects of external environment and structural factors. The research focuses on non-hi-tech manufacturing SMEs.     

出口专业化、空间依赖与我国地区经济增长

基于我国222个地级以上城市2001-2008年期间的样本数据,本文实证检验了出口结构与地区人均GDP增长率之间的关系。结果显示,出口集中度与地区经济增长之间存在显著正相关性,出口结构的专业化程度越高,地区人均GDP增长率相应越高。无论是采用经典OLS方法,还是采用控制空间依赖性的空间计量分析方法,这一结果均成立,其背后机制在于专业化导致生产活动的集聚,通过集聚经济提高生产率,从而促进人均产出的提高。本文政策含义在于,在当前发展阶段下,促进地区产业的集群化、专业化发展,充分发挥集聚经济,这对于扩大出口规模、推动地区经济增长具有积极意义。