Do Different Measures of Hospital Competition Matter in Empirical Investigations of Hospital Behavior

Considerable controversy exists about the appropriate way hospital competition should be measured and whether findings are accurate if certain methods are employed. Data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), the American Hospital Association (AHA), and other supplemental data sources are used to create and evaluate hospital competition measures. Correlation coefficients of these measures are assessed. Moreover, each measure is independently included as an explanatory variable in otherwise identical hospital cost function regressions. Their corresponding parameter estimates are then compared. Most measures are highly correlated. Inferences about the effect of competition on hospital cost remain the same when alternative hospital competition measures are employed. We caution researchers against using this finding to arbitrarily select a competition measure when the magnitude of the estimates is important.JEL Classifications: I11, L19.This paper does not represent the policy of either the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and no official endorsement by AHRQ or DHHS is intended or should be inferred.     

Platforms,systems competition,and innovation: Reassessing the foundations of communications policy

Focusing on the effects of policy on investment and innovation this paper examines whether the conceptual foundations of sector regulation are aligned with the current technological and economic conditions of advanced communications. One conclusion is that the prevailing theories and practices are only adequate if the policy challenge can be reasonably approximated as a static or steady-state problem but they may have serious shortcomings if this is not possible. The article proceeds with a review and critical examination of two approaches that could augment or possibly replace the traditional approach under conditions of dynamic competition—the theory of platform markets and systems approaches. Both frameworks model aspects of competition in interconnected systems in more detail and offer novel insights to inform communications policy in an era of continuous change. Nonetheless, important theoretical and implementation gaps remain that will require additional efforts by researchers and practitioners.     

The seed and agricultural biotechnology industries in India: An analysis of industry structure,competition, and policy options

Since the late 1980s, technological advances and policy reforms have created new opportunities for private-sector investment in India’s seed and agricultural biotechnology industries. These changes have had a significant impact on cotton yields and output in India, but less so for rice and wheat—the country’s main cereal staples—for which yield growth rates are tending toward stagnation. This analysis examines the structures of these industries, their potential effects on competition and innovation, and the policies that may improve both industry performance and the delivery of new productivity-enhancing technologies to India’s cereal production systems. Our findings suggest that more substantive policy reforms are needed to encourage further innovation, reduce regulatory uncertainty, and encourage firm- and industry-level growth, while continued public spending on agricultural research is needed to support technological change.     

竞争政策强化及产业政策转型影响市场效率的机理研究——兼论有效市场与有为政府

中国特色社会主义市场经济建设需要有效市场和有为政府更好结合,其中的一个重要途径是强化竞争政策基础地位,推进产业政策从选择性向普惠化、功能性转型。竞争政策强化与产业政策转型具有内在关联性,二者相互配合,共同促进有效市场形成。本文构建了基于竞争成功函数和共容利益假设的政企互动模型,研究发现:竞争政策和功能性产业政策有利于提升市场竞争效率,而选择性产业政策会降低市场竞争效率;功能性产业政策在一定程度上能起到弥补市场失灵的作用,体现了有为政府的积极作用。进一步考虑非对称市场竞争时发现,竞争政策可以同时兼顾提升市场竞争效率和分配效率两项目标,而选择性产业政策在两项目标上相互掣肘、由此强化竞争政策的优势凸显。本文理论模型的结论表明,有为政府应强化竞争政策基础地位,为产业政策转型创造良好的市场环境,加快选择性产业政策向功能性产业政策转型,放宽市场准入,持续推行公平竞争审查制度,维护和促进有效市场。良好的经济运行秩序需要有效市场减轻政府管控压力、有为政府简政放权营造良好市场环境,实现有效市场和有为政府更好结合。     

Competition in Local Markets: Some Evidence from the Spanish Retail Banking Market

Using the entry threshold concept developed by Bresnahan and Reiss (Brookings Pap Econ Act 3:833–882, 1987), this paper examines how competitive conditions vary in independent local banking markets when the number of depository branches grows. With data on the Spanish retail banking sector in 2003, I estimate a discrete choice model to calculate the entry thresholds. The empirical evidence suggests that the entry of a new branch implies competition on a local level. Local branches seem to have some scope for changing prices fixed on national and regional levels. Moreover, the entry of new branches increases the competition among branches with instruments other than price (e.g., advertising, location, and promotion).      

The changing public role in services to food and agriculture : The legal regulation of food markets in India

A framework allowing the commercial transfer of property rights is an essential prerequisite to market exchange widely considered the prerogative of the state. Here, the social history of the legal regulation of agricultural markets in central, south and northeast India is examined. Regulatory law is shown to be riven with unanticipated outcomes, working as intended only under rare conditions of competition and absence of preharvest commercial debt. Meso level institutions of collective action and micro level behaviour by firms also regulate exchange, unsystematically according to their multiple objectives. Foreign funded projects and another layer of customary procedure. In the light of this analysis, the current policy debates over agricultural market reform are discussed and an analytical framework and suggestions for reform are offered.     

网络外部性下的电子商务平台竞争与规制——基于双边市场理论的研究

双边市场的相关问题研究是近年来产业组织领域的前沿与热点之一,本文在已有的经典文献基础上,系统思考了网络外部性在双边市场中的作用和影响,并对电子商务平台这一典型的双边市场平台企业进行分析,研究了电子商务平台的定价与竞争机制。通过对转移成本、兼容性和模块化的研究,本文认为互联互通和模块化经营可以降低网络外部性因素引起的市场进入壁垒,减少厂商运用市场势力排斥竞争行为的可能性,在知识经济条件下,使电子商务产业形成以技术创新为主导的竞争性垄断的市场结构。     

Competition for imperfect consumers

This lecture provides a selective discussion of some issues in the economics of competition for imperfect consumers. Limited consumer awareness – about what deals are on offer, or about the consequences of purchasing decisions – is a central feature of many markets. Consumer imperfection can give rise to market power, but can also co-exist with strong rivalry between firms, and then is more for ‘consumer policy’ than competition policy. Two recent court cases illustrate some of the issues involved. The lecture then reviews a line of theoretical work on competition for imperfect consumers. The analysis highlights some policy tradeoffs, and a key theme is how patterns of consumer awareness matter for patterns of competition among firms.     

On the role of empirical industrial organization in competition policy

In this paper I consider the role of empirical industrial organization (IO) in competition policy. In particular, I consider the effect of the institutional setting in which competition policy is developed on the diffusion of ideas and techniques emerging from the empirical IO literature. In doing so my aims are two fold. First, I aim to understand the areas of competition policy most likely to provide fertile ground for future work, and those which are less likely to have an impact. And second, I hope to make a small step towards ensuring that the important potential synergies between competition policy and empirical IO are more fully developed — to the benefit of both communities and, more importantly, the public. This paper necessarily draws heavily on my experience in the UK, but many remarks may resonate more generally.     

Facilities to service based competition,not service to facilities based,for broadband penetration: A comparative study between the United States and South Korea

As a fundamental infrastructure in the Era of Information, a broadband network has a significant impact on democracy, economy, and society, indicating the importance of policy to increase broadband penetration. Considering the characteristics of broadband as a network, many governments introduced service-based competition, which is assumed to lower entry barriers by allowing entrants to lease incumbents' facilities, as a stepping stone to facilities-based competition.Questioning this unidirectional approach, the present study examines how the direction of policy implementation, that is service- to facilities-based versus facilities- to service-based, affects broadband diffusion. Through the case study of the U.S. and South Korea which experienced both modes of competition in opposing temporal sequences, this research concludes that facilities- to service-based competition might contribute to higher and faster broadband diffusion than service- to facilities-based competition. Rather than impose unbundling obligations against incumbents, facilities-based competition with financial support of the government to entrants seems to induce an earlier peak in broadband penetration. Additionally, consistent commitment of the government enforcement appears to be critical in implementing service-based competition.Though limited to the cases of the U.S. and Korea, this study suggests that service-based competition may be neither a necessity to facilitate broadband diffusion nor a precondition to introduce facilities-based competition. Moreover, service-based competition policy can function to deter overbuild of facilities and lessen the financial burden of broadband service providers if adopted after an initial period of facilities-based competition policy, which includes government investment in broadband facilities, that seems to help promote competition and give incentives to construct networks.Contrary to the literature, the present study raises a new perspective of the role of service-based competition as an enhancer for service quality and that of facilities-based competition with government investment as a booster of early and rapid broadband diffusion.     

Entrepreneurship,innovation, and political competition: How the public sector helps the sharing economy create value

Research Summary: With the recent growth of the sharing economy, regulators must frequently strike the right balance between private and public interests to maximize value creation. In this article, we argue that political competition is a critical ingredient that explains whether cities accommodate or ban ridesharing platforms and that this relationship is moderated in more populous cities and in cities with higher unemployment rates. We test our arguments using archival data covering ridesharing bans in various U.S. cities during the 2011–2015 period. We supplement these data with semistructured interviews. We find broad support for our arguments while mitigating potential endogeneity concerns. Our study has important implications for nonmarket strategy, entrepreneurship and innovation, and public-private partnership literatures. In addition, our findings inform policy debates on the sharing economy. Managerial Summary: Entrepreneurs and businesses oftentimes face severe regulatory barriers when commercializing innovative products and services even if the innovations are generally beneficial for consumers and the broader society. This research focuses on the political determinants of regulation to provide a better understanding of why some markets are more receptive to innovative products while other markets are more hostile to them. Using the banning of ridesharing companies (e.g., Uber and Lyft) in various U.S. cities during the 2011–2015 period, we find that elected politicians facing less political competition (i.e., not easily replaceable, serving multiple terms, longer tenure in office) were more likely to ban ridesharing companies and favor, potentially displaceable, local taxicab companies. Our research has implications for navigating the political barriers to entry.     

Data portability effects on data-driven innovation of online platforms: Analyzing Spotify

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduces a new right to data portability, which allows users to move their personal data to other platforms, potentially affecting competition between rival platforms offering similar (homogeneous/substitute) products or services within the European Union. However, it is still unclear what effects this new regulation could have on competition and, consequently, on innovation in digital markets. Therefore, this paper analyzes the effect of data portability driven by competition on the data-driven innovation response of online platforms such as Spotify, Google, and Facebook.We conduct an empirical analysis of Spotify, which is an online platform facing competition within the EU, and perform a comparison between data portability to number portability of the telecommunication sector to predict the future impact of the new regulation. Finally, we compare the observations on Spotify with Facebook and Google, which are companies in winner-takes-all markets.We argue that online platforms like Spotify, which face competition within the EU, will invest in two forms of data-driven innovation due to the effect of data portability. These types are ‘exploitation-innovation,’ by improving the existing technology, and ‘exploration-innovation’ by developing new technology. In ‘exploitation-innovation,’ firms, like Spotify, will increase investments in data-driven innovation to enhance users' engagement and retention to avoid churn. In ‘exploration-innovation,’ these firms will invest in data-driven innovation to develop new algorithms to include data from customers acquired from their competitors. On the contrary, online platforms, like Facebook or Google, which do not face real competition, will not have a substantial need to invest in data-driven innovation solely due to data portability.     

A quantitative analysis of trade policy responses to higher world agricultural commodity prices

The worldwide spike in prices of agricultural commodities in 2007–2008 elevated food security and social stability issues to the forefront, especially in many food-deficit countries. In order to mitigate the global food commodity price pressure on domestic markets, several major exporting and importing countries, mostly developing economies, adopted trade policy changes such as export bans (or raising export restrictions) or reducing import tariffs during the same period. This paper estimates the potential impacts of these policies on the world prices and trade of major agricultural commodities using a set of multi-country, multi-commodity, and partial-equilibrium models. Our findings suggest that over all, the trade policy responses in various countries increased the prices of all agricultural commodities, although the impact on the total net trade varies by commodity. The simulation results show that the overall impact of trade policy distortions on the world rice price is most significant at 24%, followed by wheat (14%) and barley (9%). In general, the poorer food-deficit countries/regions, which have limited power to manipulate their trade policies, experienced higher price increases compared to those major trading countries that adopted policy interventions. Also, the developing countries that are net importers which did not implement trade policy interventions experienced significant welfare losses resulting from interventions implemented by other major trading countries.     

Competition Policy and Trade Barriers: Empirical Evidence from China

This paper examines the impact of competition policy on inter-regional trade barriers among provinces in China. Using data from 28 Chinese provinces for the period 1994–2013, we show that the implementation of competition policy—as measured by a number of indices that we construct—can effectively reduce inter-regional trade barriers. We provide results that are based on both fixed effects and instrumental variables estimators to support the causal nature of the established link. The effect is found to be more salient for provinces with a less corrupt political environment. The results are also shown to be robust across alternative specifications, alternative measures of competition policy, and inter-regional trade barriers.

     

The Evolution of “Competition”: Lessons for 21st Century Telecommunications Policy

For over a century, assessments of competition or the lack thereof have been central to how public policy treats the telecommunications industry. This centrality continues today. Yet, numerous foundational questions about this concept persist. In this paper, we chronicle how the definition of “competition” has evolved in economics and has been applied in the communications arena. The academic literature on competition hits an important inflection point in the mid-20th century with the development of “workable competition”: a term that is equated to “effective competition.” We find that while the concept of “effective competition” is central to policy formation at the FCC, the Commission’s own applications of “effective competition” are inconsistent. Given the centrality of this concept, and its inconsistent applications to date, we draw upon the seminal contributions to the development of the notion of “effective competition” to offer a modern definition suitable for application in 21st century communications markets.     

Competition law and regulation in the Turkish telecommunications industry: Friends or foes?

The interaction between national competition authorities (NCAs) and national regulatory authorities (NRAs) plays a vital role in institutionalizing competition policy during regulatory reforms. Questions about jurisdictional authority over competition policy are far from settled     

Unbundling and infrastructure competition for broadband adoption: Implications for NGA regulation

The common idea of open access policy is that it refers to the sharing of particular elements, such as wholesale access networks, backhaul, under-sea cable and internet exchange points in fixed and mobile networks. In broadband networks, the use of open access policy usually refers to the infrastructure parts, which are considered a bottleneck. Many regulators have generally focused open access policy on fixed broadband networks, especially digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, in the last decade. Local loop unbundling (LLU) regulation is one of the main strategies for the regulator to open access to an incumbent’s bottleneck network in order to soften its monopoly power and encourage competition in the DSL broadband market. The OECD countries have different strategies regarding unbundling local loop and infrastructure competition, as the characteristics and infrastructure networks of countries vary. There are currently more choices of next generation network (NGN) technologies to develop. While local loop unbundling may not be applied fully to NGN development (the cost is not sunk, more technologies are available to implement, incentive of investment by operator), it can indicate benefits and drawbacks of open access policy in the past decade that can be adapted to NGN.The empirical results of this study show that during 2002–2008, LLU regulation was one of the strategies used to increase broadband adoption in countries that had difficulty encouraging infrastructure competition. Unbundling regulation can therefore be implemented carefully and differently in each country that has inefficiency that is harmful to consumers in its market from a monopoly incumbent. Infrastructure competition, on the other hand, is introduced as another strategy to increase broadband adoption. The empirical results of this study indicate that infrastructure competition can be used as a strategy when there are already enough infrastructures in the area or country. These results support the idea of using open access and infrastructure competition policy depending on the existing competition of broadband infrastructure in each country.     

Competition Policy under Laissez-Faireism: Market Power and its Treatment in Hong Kong

The paper describes the current competition policy framework in Hong Kong: how it came into existence, what business practices are prohibited, and how the enforcement system works. Recent cases in the telecommunications industry are used to illustrate the sectoral approach, a unique feature of Hong Kong's competition policy. We argue that a sectoral approach faces two fundamental drawbacks. First, due to having different ``rules of the game' for different sectors, the allocation of resources may be distorted in the long run. Second, since the relevant regulatory agencies perform dual roles both as competition policy enforcer and as traditional regulator of natural monopolies, the impartiality of their competition decisions may not be credibly conveyed to the public. We also address other specific problems associated with the sectoral approach, such as the exclusion of structural issues, narrow coverage of sectors, and the lack of public enforcement. We conclude that an overall competition law can better promote competition and economic efficiency in Hong Kong.     

Price dispersion and seller heterogeneity in retail food markets

Price dispersion, i.e. a homogeneous product being sold at different prices by different sellers, is among the most replicated findings in empirical economics. The paper assesses the extent and determinants of spatial price dispersion for 14 perfectly homogeneous food products in more than 400 retailers in a market characterized by the persistence of a large number of relatively small traditional food stores, alongside large supermarkets. The extent of observed price dispersion is quite high. When prices in an urban area (where the spatial concentration of sellers is higher) are compared with those in smaller towns and rural areas, differences in search costs and the potentially higher degree of competition do not yield lower prices. Other counteracting factors, including differences in seller costs and consumer incomes, make prices, on average, higher in the urban area for 11 of the 14 products considered. For many, but not all, the products supermarkets proved to be less expensive than traditional retailers, although average savings from food shopping at supermarkets were extremely low. Finally, the results of the study provide evidence that retailers have different pricing strategies and these differences also emerge for supermarkets belonging to the same chain. The results presented in the paper suggest that a variety of factors play a role in explaining price dispersion. In addition to differences in seller costs, the contemporaneous heterogeneity of retailers (in terms of services provided) and consumers (in terms of search costs and preferences) makes the emergence of monopolistic competition possible as well as allowing small traditional food retailers to remain in business.     

美国本地电话的竞争政策及其启示

促进本地电话竞争是美国 1 996年颁布新的《通信法》的一个重要目标。本文将讨论美国促进本地电话竞争的政策目标和主要政策措施 ,分析美国本地电话竞争政策的实施效果 ,最后着重讨论美国本地电话竞争政策对我国的若干启示。