Quality, Class, and Competition

Does Competition Kill? Hospital Quality and Competition

We seek to estimate the effects of competition for both Medicare and HMO patients on the quality decisions of hospitals in Southern California. We find that increases in the degree of competition for HMO patients decrease risk-adjusted hospital mortality rates. Conversely, increases in competition for Medicare enrollees are associated with increases in risk-adjusted mortality rates for hospital...

Competition and Illicit Quality

Working papers are in draft form. This working paper is distributed for purposes of comment and discussion only. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holder. Copies of working papers are available from the author. Competition among firms can have many positive outcomes, including decreased prices and improved quality. Yet competition can have a darker side when firms can...

Quality and Quantity Competition

Quality Disclosure and Competition

We analyze costly quality disclosure with horizontally differentiated products under duopoly and monopoly, and characterize the effect of competition on disclosure and welfare. We show that expected disclosure is higher under monopoly than under duopoly, and the welfare comparison depends on the level of disclosure cost: when the disclosure cost is low, welfare is higher under monopoly than duo...

Quality Competition or Quality Cooperation ? ∗

In the ICT sector, product-software is an important factor for the quality of the products (e.g. cell phones). In this context, open source software enables firms to avoid quality competition as they can cooperate on quality without an explicit contract. The economics of open source (OS) versus closed source (CS) business models are analyzed in a general two-stage model that combines aspects of...