Hospital markets have become highly concentrated due to increasing numbers of mergers and acquisitions. These consolidations in hospital markets may have anticompetitive or procompetitive effects due to increasing market power, economies of scale and scope and quality consequences. In this chapter, market competition and concentration and their antitrust implications in hospital markets are exa...

These comments about audit, attributed to a conference delegate from Wigan, have a familiar and contemporary ring, although they were published over a decade ago. However, the same views expressed today would have more to do with a growing scepticism about what audit can achieve than with fear of the unknown, as was probably the case then. Although audit seems to be alive and well, with medical...

the paper examines industrial concentration in iranian food products and beverages industries using firm level data aggregated to the 4-digit isic industry level between 2002 and 2004. based on different concentration indices the average level of concentration has increased slightly for the period of study. the empirical results show that increase in the level of concentration is more likely in...

Independence (in fact as well as in appearance) is widely thought to be necessary for the quality of audits, and audit quality is often equated with independence. Private incentives to demand (and supply) independent certification of financial statements are thought to be insufficient, thus the need to mandate independence through regulation. This study presents data from a field experiment on ...

OBJECTIVES To explore and describe the views on clinical audit of healthcare purchasers and providers, and in particular the interaction between them, and hence to help the future development of an appropriate interaction between purchasers and providers. DESIGN Semistructured interviews. SETTING Four purchaser and provider pairings in the former Northern Region of the National Health Servi...