This paper investigates whether management teams that fail to exploit regulatory loopholes are vulnerable to replacement. We use the U.S. hospital industry in 1985–96 as a case study. A 1988 change in Medicare rules widened a preexisting loophole in the Medicare payment system, presenting hospitals with an opportunity to increase operating margins by 5 or more percentage points simply by “upcod...

The long-standing argument that focused operations outperform others stands in contrast to claims about the benefits of broader operational scope. The performance benefits of focus are typically attributed to reduced complexity, lower uncertainty, and the development of specialized expertise, while the benefits of greater breadth are linked to the economies of scope achieved by sharing common r...

We estimate a bargaining model of competition between hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs) and use the estimates to evaluate the effects of hospital mergers. We find that MCO bargaining restrains hospital prices significantly. The model demonstrates the potential impact of coinsurance rates, which allow MCOs to partly steer patients towards cheaper hospitals. We show that increasing ...

BACKGROUND Many epidemiological studies reported significant associations between air pollution and respiratory hospital admissions. Proximity of industries to the residential areas may have considerable impacts on air quality and subsequently public health. This paper describes the indirect impacts of closing a large steel industry, Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP), in the Lower Hunter region, Au...

INTRODUCTION The Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) has implemented different safety initiatives to improve the safety performance of the construction industry over the past decades. The Pay for Safety Scheme (PFSS), which is one of the effective safety measures launched by the government in 1996, has been widely adopted in the public works contracts. Both the accid...

background: many epidemiological studies reported significant associations between air pollution and respiratory hos­pital admissions. proximity of industries to the residential areas may have considerable impacts on air quality and sub­sequently public health. this paper describes the indirect impacts of closing a large steel industry, broken hill proprie­tary (bhp), in the lower hunter region...