Medicare continues to implement payment reforms that shift reimbursement from fee-for-service toward episode-based payment, affecting average and marginal payment. We contrast the effects of two reforms for home health agencies. The home health interim payment system in 1997 lowered both types of payment; our conceptual model predicts a decline in the likelihood of use and costs, both of which ...

88 estimates of the marginal costs of carbon dioxide emissions were gathered from 22 published studies and combined to form a probability density function. The uncertainty is strongly rightskewed. If all studies are combined, the mode is $5/tC, the mean $104/tC, and the 95 percentile $446/tC. Studies with a lower discount rate have higher estimates and a much greater uncertainties. Similarly, s...

This article measures the extent to which prices exceed marginal costs in the U.S. natural gas distribution market during the period 1991-2007. We find large departures from marginal cost pricing in all 50 states, with residential and commercial customers facing average markups of over 40%. Based on conservative estimates of the price elasticity of demand these distortions impose hundreds of mi...

OBJECTIVES The primary objective of this paper is to compare cervical cancer screening rates of family physicians in Ontario's two dominant reformed practice models, Family Health Group (FHG) and Family Health Organization (FHO), and traditional fee-for-service (FFS) model. Both reformed models formally enrol patients and offer extensive pay-for-performance incentives; however, they differ by r...

The cost-benefit model for the evolution of carnivorous plants posits a trade-off between photosynthetic costs associated with carnivorous structures and photosynthetic benefits accrued through additional nutrient acquisition. The model predicts that carnivory is expected to evolve if its marginal benefits exceed its marginal costs. Further, the model predicts that when nutrients are scarce but...

The UK Government recently reviewed its methodology to value greenhouse gas emissions in policy appraisal. The Review implemented a move away from the previous approach, which used estimates of marginal social damage costs (‘the social cost of carbon’) to value changes in emissions, to one in which valuation is based on the marginal abatement costs that will need to be incurred to meet specific...

• Two classical models in the theory of oligopoly are those of Coumot (1838) and Bertrand (1883). In both models the equilibrium concept is the noncooperative equilibrium of Nash (1950). In the former firms set quantities. In the latter prices are the strategy variables. In a duopoly situation where firms produce a homogeneous good and marginal costs are constant and equal for both firms, the B...

We construct two simple examples that help to clarify the role of a key assumption in the analysis of price or quantity controls of greenhouse gases in the presence of uncertain costs. Traditionally much has been made of the fact that greenhouse gases are a stock pollutant, and that therefore the marginal benefit curve must be relatively flat. This fact is said to establish the preference of a ...

This paper clarifies how uncertainty affects irreversible investment in a competitive market equilibrium. With free entry, irreversibility affects the distribution of future prices, and thereby creates an opportunity cost of investing now rather than waiting. As with an imperfectly competitive firm, uncertainty can also increase the value of a marginal unit of capital. I show that with an infin...