IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v104y2014i12p3841-84.html

Hospital Choices, Hospital Prices, and Financial Incentives to Physicians

Author

Listed:
  • Kate Ho
  • Ariel Pakes

Abstract

We estimate an insurer-specific preference function which rationalizes hospital referrals for privately insured births in California. The function is additively separable in: a hospital price paid by the insurer, the distance traveled, and plan- and severity-specific hospital fixed effects (capturing hospital quality). We use an inequality estimator that allows for errors in price and detailed hospital-severity interactions and obtain markedly different results than those from a logit. The estimates indicate that insurers with more capitated physicians are more responsive to price. Capitated plans send patients further to utilize similar quality, lower-priced hospitals; but the cost-quality trade-off does not vary with capitation rates. (JEL G22, H51, I11, I13, I18, J44)

Suggested Citation

  • Kate Ho & Ariel Pakes, 2014. "Hospital Choices, Hospital Prices, and Financial Incentives to Physicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(12), pages 3841-3884, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:12:p:3841-84
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.12.3841
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.104.12.3841
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/app/10412/20121555_app.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/10412/20121555_data.zip
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10412/20121555_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Health
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • I13 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Insurance, Public and Private
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    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:aea:aecrev:v:104:y:2014:i:12:p:3841-84. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.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.