hospital choices hospital prices and financial incentives to physicians we estimate an insurer speci c 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 speci c hospital xed eects capturing hospital quality we use an inequality estimator that allows for errors in price and detailed hospital severity interactions and obtain markedly dierent 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 odoes not vary with capitation rates the patient protection and aordable care act of 2010 includes provisions to establish ac countable care organizations acos in the medicare program these are groups of health care providers that oer services to a large number of patients and are eligible to share in any cost savings they achieve for the medicare program 1 private sector acos are forming in parallel to this initiative often with very similar structures and payment arrangements the proportion of savings acos keep is linked to their performance on quality standards the goal of the initiative is to reduce health care costs in both medicare and private insurance and to improve coordination of care the tying of cost savings to quality standards is designed to mitigate the concern that an increase in incentives to control costs might lead to a decrease in the quality of care the health policy literature has noted that similar cost control incentives are currently utilized by some health maintenance organizations hmos in california and elsewhere 2 in this paper we investigate the impact of these incentives on the cost and quality of care provided to patients focusing in particular on the choice of hospital for privately insured patients giving birth we use

capitalization of government support in agricultural land prices what do we know abstract the objective of this paper is to provide an overview of existing literature both theoretically and empirically on the extent to which agricultural subsidies do translate into higher land values and rents and finally benefit landowners instead of agricultural producers our review shows that agricultural support policy instruments contribute to increasing the rental price of farmland and that the extent of this increase closely depends on the level of the supply price elasticity of farmland relative to those of other factors inputs on the one hand and on the range of the possibilities of factor input substitution in agricultural production on the other hand the empirical literature shows that land prices and rents have in general a significant positive and inelastic response to government support such inelastic response is thought to reflect the uncertain future of the farm programmes and in general studies have indicated that land prices are more responsive to government based returns than to market based returns

a comprehensive analysis of farmland value determination a county level analysis this study develops a comprehensive model of farmland value determination to analyze the effects of various economic variables such as net farm income government payments macroeconomic factors and demographic conditions on farmland values for the counties along the snake river valley in idaho land values net farm income and population show considerable variation among the counties therefore use of county level cross sectional and time series data helps to assess the impacts of various factors on land values more accurately the empirical results show that net farm income wheat yield population and credit availability have positive effects and property tax rates interest rates and debt to asset ratio have negative effects on farmland values

formally testing the present value model of farmland prices this paper applies recent statistical developments in the study of stock market price movements to study the plausibility of the constant expected returns version of the present value model as an explanation of farmland prices using iowa farmland price and rent data over the 1921 86 sample period formal test results indicate that although farmland price and rent movements are highly correlated price movements are not consistent with the implications of this model there appear to be persistent predictable excess positive and or negative returns in the iowa farmland market

equilibrium effects of health care price information do information frictions in health care markets lead to higher prices and price dispersion focusing on medical imaging procedures this paper examines the equilibrium effect of a unique statewide

export demand us farm income and land prices 1945 1985 the growing openness of the u s economy has caused world supply and demand conditions to have significant farm level impacts emphasizing the important macroeconomic linkages between capital goods and factor markets in agriculture schuh 1983 this study considers the linkage from the international grain market to u s farm income in the post war period 194985 this linkage suggests that export demand may also have played an important role affecting land and other input prices through the derived demand relationship burt 1986 phipps 1984 and robison lins and venkataraman 1985 have each shown that land prices are closely tied to real and expected net returns to farming this study seeks to supplement their findings by examining the relative role of exports in determining these returns over time empirical results clearly show the export farm income connection the further linkage to land values while present is somewhat less clear

public versus private governance a study of incentives and operational performance abstract this study explores incentives and performance in organizations governed by publicly elected boards of directors and subsidized by taxes such organizations are likely to underpay chief executive officers ceos resulting in selection and incentive problems and hence poor operating performance we compare municipal district hospitals to private nonprofit hospitals ceo compensation in district hospitals is significantly lower than in the nonprofits operating margins in district hospitals are lower and deteriorate more rapidly over time we rule out a number of other factors that could explain differences in performance we conclude that the weak governance structure hampers district hospitals

cash rents and land values in u s agriculture a firm level land valuation model is deduced which depends on the expected growth rate in net cash returns to land inflation expectations and property income and capital gains taxes it is then aggregated to obtain an aggregate two sector land valuation model that model is then estimated for twenty four individual states for the period 1960 81 in addition a pooled cross sectional regression model is estimated combining the twenty four state data the model results demonstrate that significant state differences exist in the land market and that in many states agricultural land values are influenced by nonagricultural demand for land

hospital systems and bargaining power evidence from out of market acquisitions competition analyses generally restrict their attention to how mergers alter concentration in the relevant consumer market studying hospital competition by focusing on the local patient market may be misleading however as multi market hospital systems often play an important role in the price negotiations of their members with managed care organizations we focus on out of market hospital mergers to investigate the cross market effects of system membership on member hospital reimbursement rates based on acquisitions occurring across the united states during 2000 2008 we find that hospitals exhibit significant increases of around 14 in their net reimbursement rates after becoming affiliated with an out of market system compared to independent stand alone hospitals we find no evidence that the price effect results from changes in patient case mix the cost of providing care generally or hospital quality the findings reveal that systems can impact the market power of hospitals in ways that have not been considered in recent antitrust analysis

insurer hospital bargaining negotiated discounts in post deregulation connecticut this paper uses unique data from the state of connecticut to examine discounting patterns in the state s hospital industry for the years following deregulation 1995 1998 the data provide a rare opportunity to study payer level differences in negotiated discounts for hospital services in addition to presenting descriptive evidence on how discounts vary across payers payer types and hospital types this study uses matched revenue data to analyze the economic determinants of discount magnitudes payer size appears to affect bargaining power but the economic significance of the effect is small the data exhibit patterns consistent with a bargaining explanation in which discount magnitudes depend critically on payers abilities to channel patients to hospitals with which favorable discounts have been negotiated

the effects of regulation and competition in the nhs internal market the case of general practice fundholder prices the 1989 reforms of the uk national health service introduced competition in supply within a tightly regulated framework the paper examines whether this competition affects the prices posted by sellers of medical services we argue that despite regulation market forces may have an impact on price we test this using the posted prices for one of the two types of buyer general practice fundholders we find the regulatory rules are not observed and some evidence of the impact of market forces on price

environmental policy uncertainty and marketable permit systems the dutch phosphate quota program tradable permits are generally considered as an efficient instrument to regulate pollution by individual producers however uncertainty about changes in or possible discontinuation of the program could make individual farmers reluctant to invest in tradable permits this article uses the option approach to derive a theoretical model that shows the impact of policy uncertainty on investment in tradable quota the empirical assessment provides weak evidence for the existence of option values due to policy uncertainty for phosphate quota in swine production in the netherlands

the inconsistency of land values land rents and capitalization formulas this paper examines relationships that exist between farm income land values and capital asset pricing theory using two commonly referenced data sets it is shown that land prices and land rents do not have the same time series representations a necessary condition for the simple capital asset pricing theory to hold this suggests that a fundamental rethinking of the way in which land prices are viewed and modeled is needed more complex models that allow for rational bubbles risk aversion and future shifts in government policy or commodity prices may be required

who really benefits from agricultural subsidies evidence from field level data if agricultural subsidies are largely capitalized into farmland values then expanding support for agriculture may not benefit farmers who rent the land they farm suddenly reducing subsidies may be problematic to the extent that land values already embody expectations about future subsidies existing evidence on the incidence of subsidies on land values is mixed identification is obscured by unobserved or imprecisely measured factors that tend to be correlated with subsidies especially land quality and time varying factors like commodity prices and adverse weather events a problem that has received less attention is the fact that subsides and land quality on rented land may differ from owned land since most farms possess both rented and owned acreage farm level measures of subsidies land values and rental rates may bias estimated incidence using a new field level data set that for the first time precisely links subsidies to land parcels we show that this bias is considerable where farm level estimates suggest an incidence of 20 to 79 cents of the marginal subsidy dollar field level estimates from the same farms indicate that landlords capture just 10 25 cents the size of the farm and the duration of the rental arrangement have substantial effects incidence falls by 5 15 cents per acre when doubling total operated acres and the incidence falls by 0 1 1 2 cents with each additional year of the rental arrangement low incidence of subsides on rents combined with the farm size and duration effects suggest that farmers renting land have monopsony power

boom bust cycles and ricardian rent north american agriculture has been characterized by many as a boom bust industry for example between 1973 and 1983 prairie farmers experienced the most prosperous period of grain farming ever known in western canada had the golden age finally arrived for prairie agriculture prosperity came to a grinding halt in the mid 1980s and in the late 1980s prairie grain farmers entered into one of the worst economic situ

market structure and prices the responses of hospitals in the uk national health service to competition abstract the internal market reforms to the uk national health service nhs are a model adopted in many health care systems they introduce competition in supply little is known about the impact of these reforms this paper examines the pricing responses of nhs suppliers to competition the incentives of the reformed system are analysed these indicate that prices should differ between buyers and markets these hypotheses are tested using data on spot market transactions between hospitals and health care buyers the results indicate considerable price variability but offer broad support for the hypotheses

the capitalization of coupled and decoupled cap payments into land rental rates this article explores the extent to which payments under the common agricultural policy cap are capitalized into land rents in ireland with implications for the transfer efficiency of such payments since subsidies may not benefit targeted recipients if they are capitalized into input prices capitalization in the years preceding and following the decoupling of agricultural support payments from agricultural production is explored in the period prior to decoupling direct support pillar 1 payments were highly capitalized into irish agricultural rents 67 90 cents per euro of subsidies while in the post decoupling period capitalization appears to have declined somewhat

an analysis of growth of u s farmland prices 1963 82 increases in expected inflation or real growth in net rental income to land have been proposed as alternative explanations of the dramatic real growth in u s farmland prices in the 1970s in this paper the effect of inflation is shown to be theoretically ambiguous an empirical analysis using u s and international farmland prices suggests that most of the real land price growth can be explained by real growth in net rental income to land increases in expected inflation have had a negative effect on real land prices but the effect of inflation has been comparatively small

what do not for profit hospitals maximize abstract massive structural change is occurring in health care provision in the united states significantly reducing the number of not for profit suppliers this trend is fueled in part by government policies to evaluate these policies one must know about the motives of not for profit health care providers the theory of not for profit hospitals suggests buyers may prefer dealing with sellers who are not acting out of avarice yet this theory does not imply the absence of rent seeking motives we formulate a test of not for profit hospitals goals and apply it to hospitals in virginia modeling average revenues as a function of caseload private medicare medicaid charity we identify prices as latent variables by analyzing the response of the estimated private price to exogenous differences in medicare medicaid and charity caseload we reject the hypothesis that not for profit hospitals maximize profits i e maximize rents for a set of agents who control the hospital we also reject pure welfare output maximization these results combined with other evidence we discuss are consistent with the hypothesis that these hospitals consider both profits and output as objectives current us government policies treat all not for profit hospitals as if they were profit maximizers these policies appear to be biased towards reenforcing the trend towards less health care provision from not for profits and our results suggest that this may not be entirely beneficial to consumers

the impacts of the tax deferred exchange provision on farm real estate values this study examines the effects of the section 1031 tax deferred exchange provision on agricultural land values the provision allows taxpayers to defer taxation for relinquished productive assets if a like kind asset is acquired within the allotted time of 180 days the analysis examines a set of 3 580 farm real estate transaction from 55 agricultural counties in indiana over the period 2003 2006 hedonic price analysis suggests that properties acquired under a like kind exchange are associated with a 1 32 price premium jel h23 q15

prices technology and farm size in this paper we construct and empirically test a theory of the agricultural firm which explains the long term growth in farm size in the united states typically the u s farm unit is a family enterprise consequently the ratio of the opportunity cost of farm labor to the price of machinery services determines the size of the farm operation by influencing the machine labor ratio applying the model to u s data we explain virtually all of the growth in the machine labor ratio and in farm size over the 1930 70 period by changes in relative factor prices without reference to technological change or economies of scale

tax policies and the financially constrained farm household this article analyzes the implications of income profit and consumption taxes on the economic decisions of financially constrained farm households within a dynamic intertemporal framework the most important results are that replacing a profits tax with a consumption tax would lead to increases in on farm work farm income and farm production in the short run capital accumulation would be enhanced leading to similar effects in the long run if an income tax is replaced with a consumption tax similar expansive effects would occur in the intermediate and long run but in the short run there would be no effect on farm production

the impact of hospital market structure on patient volume average length of stay and the cost of care a variety of recent proposals rely heavily on market forces as a means of controlling hospital cost inflation sceptics argue however that increased competition might lead to cost increasing acquisitions of specialized clinical services and other forms of non price competition as means of attracting physicians and patients using data from hospitals in 1972 we analyzed the impact of market structure on average hospital costs measured in terms of both cost per patient and cost per patient day under the retrospective reimbursement system in place at the time hospitals in more competitive environments exhibited significantly higher costs of production than did those in less competitive environments

nonprofit hospital mergers and the exercise of market power government challenges to mergers within the hospital industry have become more frequent many of those mergers involve nonprofit organizations rather than the for profit firms that are the norm in most other industries this difference in ownership has made no apparent difference in the antitrust agencies approach to proposed hospital mergers in this article i test the proposition that nonprofit and for profit hospitals price differently in response to the structure of the markets in which they compete based on a cross sectional analysis of california hospitals i find that estimated merger effects on hospital prices do vary by type of ownership in response to either higher market share or to the joint combination of higher share and higher market concentration private nonprofit hospital prices are statistically significantly lower than for profit hospital prices and on balance in this sample there is no evidence of any systematic price increasing effect on private nonprofit hospitals

the relationship between hospital mortality rates and hospital market and patient characteristics this study analyses the relationship between hospital outcome specifically mortality rates and various hospital and market characteristics the data are for all general acute care hospitals in california in 1991 that had at least 50 medicare cases selected by the health care financing administration hcfa for their computation of 1991 observed and predicted mortality rates the dependent variable was constructed from these mortality rates hospital and market characteristics were obtained from california s office of statewide health planning and development 1991 tapes the american hospital association s annual 1991 report 1990 census data and hcfa s 1991 medicare hospital mortality information report highly significant results p 0 01 were found for three of the predictor variables improved mortality rates were associated with a lower proportion of medicaid patients with a larger market and with a higher prior year profit margin other factors that contributed to improved mortality rates p

farmland accumulation and prices a model of farmland accumulation is developed to study factors influencing u s farmland values this model stresses the manner in which credit is allocated for land purchases to secure necessary loans for additional land to expand farm size the farmer provides as collateral his net accumulated wealth thus land acquisitions are made to increase profits and to provide leverage for further land expansion besides income and consumption the level of accumulated debt is one of the main determinants of farmland prices derived demand for farmland is developed and the pricing equation for farmland is estimated as part of a structural equation model

price and concentration in hospital markets the switch from patient driven to payer driven competition perhaps the most widely accepted paradigm of industrial organization i o is that competition lowers prices or alternatively that price cost margins are lower in less concentrated markets 1 the applicability of this paradigm for hospital markets has been questioned for example in united states vs carilion health system and roanoke valley hospital the district and appellate courts accepted evidence that hospital prices are lower in more concentrated markets and thereby approved a merger between the two largest hospitals in a three hospital market 2 the view that competition has a weak or perverse effect on hospital prices is shared by a number of researchers 3 is a common theme in newspaper stories

the role of hospital competition on treatment expenditure and outcome evidence from stroke and cardiac treatment in taiwan this article examines whether market competition affects treatment expenditure and health outcomes of stroke and cardiac treatment in taiwan our measure of treatment expenditure is the hospital expenditure paid at the index admission short term and the sum of inpatient and outpatient expenditures paid in the subsequent year long term our measure of health outcome is the probability of death in 1 and 12 months after the hospital s discharge our measure of competition follows the method developed by kessler and mcclellan that calculates the herfindal index based on the predicted patient flows using exogenous variables e g traveling distance to hospitals using data of patients hospitalized for new stroke and cardiac treatment between 1997 and 2001 in taiwan we find that an increase of market competition results in an insignificant impact on a patient s mortality in terms of treatment expenditure our results indicate that hospitals facing more competition incur higher expenditures either the short or long term expenditure finally we find evidence showing that an increase of treatment expenditure at admission is due to a raise of length of stay and treatment intensity per day as well as the usage of expensive equipment jel i11 l13 l41

linking the price of agricultural land to use values and amenities the recent appreciation in agricultural land values across the united states has raised a number of important questions for farmers farmland owners lenders and policy makers while traditional economic theory suggests that farmland values are determined by the discounted stream of expected returns previous research has shown that agricultural land values are actually driven by a complex set of factors this study leverages the unique characteristics of a national land based usda survey on farmland values and cash rents to estimate broad national level determinants of the market value of cropland and pastureland our results support past research findings that indicate farmland values are only partially explained by agricultural returns we find that multiple nonagricultural attributes of farmland also contribute to the market value

the competitive effects of not for profit hospital mergers a case study applying conventional horizontal merger enforcement rules to nonprofit hospitals is controversial critics contend that the different objective function of not for profits entities should mitigate competitive concerns about mergers involving nonprofit hospitals we analyze a merger that reduced the number of competitors both nonprofit in the alleged relevant market from three to two we find that the transaction was followed by significant price increases we reject the hypothesis that these price increases reflect higher post merger quality this study should help policymakers assess the validity of current merger enforcement rules especially as they apply to not for profit enterprises

competition in nhs quasi markets recent reforms of the national health service have focused attention on contracts for health services and competition amongst the providers of those services as means of ensuring that quality is maintained at an acceptable standard whilst costs are contained this paper considers the particular roles that competition may be expected to play in both health authority and gp fundholder quasi markets copyright 1996 by oxford university press

can empirical demand models assist in con comparative reviews a case study in florida certificate of need con programs for new hospital construction are intended to foster the best selection among competing hospital applications given demands for hospital care in the community yet the merits of con depend in part on the quality of the comparative review process this article examines a case study in florida to illustrate the utility of empirical evaluations using patient choice models i estimate such models to show how patients would respond to a change in hospital choices by simulating the welfare effects of the proposed hospitals i can further predict how prices of hospital care differ by applicant results suggest that empirical analysis using data on patient choice of hospitals may better inform the review process at the same time however it may not give a unique ranking without additional analysis of the fixed costs of proposed services in the context of existing marketwide capacity

the impact of landownership security theory and evidence from thailand this article develops a model of farmers land acquisition and investment decisions the model clarifies the relation between land values landownership security and credit markets the risk of eviction of untitled lands and the advantages in access to credit associated with titled land are shown to account for the higher price of titled land furthermore observed land prices are distorted when credit is priced below the opportunity cost of capital and the risk of eviction is positive therefore social benefit analysis of land titling cannot utilize land prices without correcting for these distortions the article offers formulas for performing such corrections econometric estimates of the value of legal ownership in three provinces of thailand using cross section land price data show a statistically significant effect of ownership security on land price the econometric estimates of ownership security are combined with the formulas generated by the model to yield estimates of the social benefit of land titling in the three provinces the analysis implies that granting full legal ownership to squatters can be a socially beneficial policy in many provinces

the changing effects of competition on non profit and for profit hospital pricing behavior abstract has the nature of hospital competition changed from a medical arms race in which hospitals compete for patients by offering their doctors high quality services to a price war for the patients of payors this paper uses time series cross sectional methods on california hospital discharge data from 1986 1994 to show the association of hospital prices with measures of market concentration changed steadily over this period with prices now higher in less competitive areas even for non profit hospitals regression results are used to simulate the price impact of hypothetical hospital mergers

uncoupled dynamics do not lead to nash equilibrium it is notoriously difficult to formulate sensible adaptive dynamics that guarantee convergence to nash equilibrium in fact short of variants of exhaustive search deterministic or stochastic there are no general results of course there are many important interesting and well studied particular cases see the books of jorgen w weibull 1995 fernando vegaredondo 1996 larry samuelson 1997 drew fudenberg and david k levine 1998 josef hofbauer and karl sigmund 1998 h peyton young 1998 and the discussion in section iv below here we provide a simple answer to the question why is that so our answer is that the lack of a general result is an intrinsic consequence of the natural requirement that dynamics of play be uncoupled among the players that is the adjustment of a player s strategy does not depend on the payoff functions or utility functions of the other players it may depend on the other players strategies as well as on the payoff function of the player himself this is a basic informational condition for dynamics of the adaptive or behavioral type it is important to emphasize that unlike the existing literature see section iv we make no rationality assumptions our dynamics are not best reply dynamics or better reply or payoffimproving or monotonic and so on what we show is that the impossibility result is due only to an informational requirement that the dynamics be uncoupled

vegetable spirits and energy policy this study investigates the extent to which the 2005 energy policy act specifically the ethanol mandate contributed to the rise in farmland values we use the location of new ethanol plants to identify the capitalization effect of the mandate by these spatially advantaged operations we use a difference in difference propensity score matching estimator to control for the non random selection of ethanol production facilities the empirical strategy uses farmland parcel values from the 2001 7 june agriculture survey we find that new ethanol facilities had no effect on nearby farmland values prior to the mandate but had statistically significant effects after the policy copyright 2013 oxford university press

managed care s price bargaining with hospitals research has shown that managed care mc slowed the rate of growth in health care spending in the 1990s primarily via lower unit prices paid however the mechanism of mc s price bargaining has not been well studied this article uses a unique panel dataset with actual hospital prices in massachusetts between 1994 and 2000 to examine the sources of mc s bargaining power i find two significant determinants of price discounts first plans with large memberships are able to extract volume discounts across hospitals second health plans that are more successful at channeling patients can extract greater discounts patient channeling can add to the volume discount that plans negotiate

does structure matter the impact of switching the agricultural policy regime on farm structures abstract this paper investigates the relationship between structural change in agriculture and a policy regime switch at the regional level using the agent based spatial and dynamic simulation model agripolis we simulate structural change for two different farm structures in response to a policy change results show that structural adjustment differs depending on the initial structure

is the impact of managed care on hospital prices decreasing prior studies find that the growth of managed care through the early 1990s introduced a strong positive relationship between price and concentration in hospital markets we hypothesize that the relaxation of constraints on consumer choice in response to a managed care backlash has diminished the price sensitivity of demand facing hospitals reducing or possibly reversing the price concentration relationship we test this hypothesis by studying the price concentration relationship for hospitals in california and florida for selected years between 1990 and 2003 while addressing the potential endogeneity of concentration we find an increasingly positive price concentration in the 1990s with a peak occurring by 2001 between 2001 and 2003 the growth in this relationship halts and possibly reverses

does competition between hospitals improve the quality of care hospital death rates and the nhs internal market payer driven competition has been widely advocated as a means of increasing efficiency in health care markets the 1990s reforms to the uk health service followed this path we examine whether competition led to better outcomes for patients as measured by death rates after treatment following heart attacks using data that until 1999 was not publicly available in any form on hospital level death rates we find that the relationship between competition and quality of care appears to be negative greater competition is associated with higher death rates controlling for patient mix and other observed characteristics of the hospital and the catchment area for its patients however the estimated impact of competition is small jel classification i1 l8 h4

land prices land rents and technological change evidence from pakistan abstract the intertemporal behavior of land prices and land rents in two production environments of pakistan is investigated empirical analyses indicate that a agricultural technology adoption has had a strong positive impact on real land rents over the past 30 years in both irrigated and rainfed areas b capitalization of rents into land prices has accounted for approximately 70 of observed increases in land prices during this period c expected capital gains have been an important additional factor driving up land prices and d neither expected inflation nor inflows of remittance income from abroad have had a significant effect on land prices

the effect of network arrangements on hospital pricing behavior the department of justice doj and the federal trade commission ftc have taken a recent interest in collaborations among hospitals that do not entail common ownership despite the lack of scientific evidence regarding effects of these hospital networks on market competition this paper explores the relationship between hospital networks and pricing behavior in california during a period of dynamic increase in hospital network activity there using herfindahl hirschman indexes hhi market definitions based on patient origin and accounting for network relationships we find a positive network effect on hospital pricing however this result appears to be generated primarily by system owned hospitals that form networks to provide particular services jointly

understanding farmland price changes this paper develops a structural model of land prices which includes the multidimensional effects of inflation on capital erosion savings return erosion and real debt reduction as well as the effect of changes in the opportunity cost of capital the results show that inflation and changes in the real returns on capital are major explanatory factors in farmland price swings in addition to returns to farming additionally the effects of credit market constraints and expectations schemes are considered explicitly in the analytical model

land prices and farm based returns the theoretical and empirical relationship between farm based residual returns the opportunity cost of farmland and farmland prices is developed temporal hypotheses concerning the source of land price movements are tested using a variant of granger causality in the aggregate farmland prices are found to be unidirectionally caused by residual farm based returns the findings support the hypothesis that farmland prices are determined mainly within the farm sector and lend credence to the use of extrapolative expectations processes in structural farmland price models

evolution of repeated prisoner s dilemma play under logit dynamics in an evolutionary set up we append an ecology of iterated prisoner s dilemma ipd game strategies consisting of unconditional cooperators allc unconditional defectors alld and reactive players tft with two repeated strategies that have received less attention in the evolutionary ipd game literature the error proof generous tit for tat gtft which with a certain probability re establishes cooperation after a possibly by mistake defection of the opponent and the penitent stimulus response wsls strategy that resets cooperation after the opponent punished for defection an abundance of rock paper scissors like patterns is discovered in the 3x3 ecologies comprising pavlovian and generous gtft players interestingly the evolutionary success of pavlov seems to depend on the absence of unconditional allc cooperators in the ecologies investigated

competition among hospitals the traditional view of hospital competition has posited that hospitals compete primarily along quality dimensions in the form of fancy equipment to attract admitting physicians and pleasant surroundings to entice patients price competition among hospitals is thought to be non existent this paper estimates the effects of various hospital market characteristics on hospital prices and expenses in an attempt to determine the form of hospital competition the results suggest that both price and quality competition are greater in markets that are less concentrated although the net effect of the two on prices is insignificant it appears therefore that despite important distortions hospital markets are not immune to standard competitive forces

pricing by non profit institutions the case of hospital cost shifting abstract this paper shows that a hospital whose objective function includes output as well as profits may raise price to private paying patients in response to cuts in the price it receives for madicaid or medicaid patients evidence is presented to show that hospitals in illinois cost shifted in this manner in response to substantial reductions in medicaid payments in the early 1980s as private sector pricing becomes more competitive however the ability and willingness of hospitals to cost shift will wane

the logit response dynamics we develop a characterization of stochastically stable states for the logit response learning dynamics in games with arbitraryspecification of revision opportunities the result allows us to show convergence to the set of nash equilibria in the class of best response potential games and the failure of the dynamics to select potential maximizers beyond the class of exact potential games we also study to which extent equilibrium selection is robust to the specificationof revision opportunities our techniques can be extended and applied to a wide class of learning dynamics in games

is hospital competition socially wasteful we study the consequences of hospital competition for medicare beneficiaries heart attack care from 1985 to 1994 we examine how relatively exogenous determinants of hospital choice such as travel distances influence the competitiveness of hospital markets and how hospital competition interacts with the influence of managed care organizations to affect the key determinants of social welfare expenditures on treatment and patient health outcomes in the 1980s the welfare effects of competition were ambiguous but in the 1990s competition unambiguously improves social welfare increasing hmo enrollment over the sample period partially explains the dramatic change in the impact of hospital competition

is hospital competition wasteful stable url http links jstor org sici sici 0741 6261 28199222 2923 3a2 3c247 3aihcw 3e2 0 co 3b2 zthe rand journal of economics is currently published by the rand corporation your use of the jstor archive indicates your acceptance of jstor s terms and conditions of use available athttp www jstor org about terms html jstor s terms and conditions of use provides in part that unless you have obtainedprior permission you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles and you may use content inthe jstor archive only for your personal non commercial use please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work publisher contact information may be obtained athttp www jstor org journals rand html each copy of any part of a jstor transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission the jstor archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long term preservation and access to leading academicjournals and scholarly literature from around the world the archive is supported by libraries scholarly societies publishers and foundations it is an initiative of jstor a not for profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community takeadvantage of advances in technology for more information regarding jstor please contact support jstor org http www jstor orgfri jan 4 14 10 49 2008

hospital competition in hmo networks abstract we develop a framework for analyzing bargaining relationships between hospitals and hmos under selective contracting using a unique dataset on hospitals in the los angeles area from 1990 to 1993 we estimate the determinants of actual negotiated prices paid to hospitals by two major hmos we find that a hospital s bargaining power and thus its price decrease when the hmo can readily turn to alternative networks that exclude the hospital we simulate the effect of hypothetical hospital mergers on bargaining power and find that some hospital mergers even in urban areas with many nearby hospitals can lead to significant price increases

the changing roles of urban influence and agricultural productivity in farmland price determination between 2000 and 2010 inflation adjusted u s farmland values increased by over 80 this period of rapid price appreciation coincided with both the agricultural commodity price boom and the broader financial crisis this paper examines the degree to which the determinants of farmland prices changed over this period using a panel of farmland transfer declarations from 98 illinois counties hedonic price analysis demonstrates that the relative importance of urban influence decreased over this period while the relative importance of agricultural productivity increased the study carries important implications for farmers farmland owners and policy makers

factors impacting market concentration of not for profit hospitals we attempt to identify and evaluate the association between key characteristics of not for profit np hospitals and market concentration as measured by the herfindahl hirschman index using data available from the american hospital association the centers for medicare and medicaid services and the internal revenue service form 990 our goal is to provide decision support to policy makers on factors that contribute to market competitiveness which has been linked to improvements in efficiency costs and access to health care we find that contributions are positively associated with market concentration this could indicate that well run np hospitals that deliver on their mission are rewarded both financially through increased contributions as well as with increased market share we also find that a higher percentage of medicare patients is positively correlated with market concentration i e reduces the competitiveness of the np market this could be explained by the fact that medicare reimbursement rates are generally lower than those paid by private insurers approximately 80 thus hospitals might not necessarily choose to operate in areas with high medicare populations further median income is negatively associated with market concentration one explanation for this effect could be the fact that a population with a higher median income is in a better position to pay for services making them attractive to hospitals as a potential market finally we find that the presence of managers with voting rights on the boards of directors has no significant impact

amenity benefits and the optimal allocation of land agricultural land often yields sig nificant amenity benefits that may not be re flected in the prevailing allocation of land be tween agricultural and nonagricultural uses this paper introduces a simple supply demand model that incorporates these benefits in the de termination of optimal land allocation three stage least squares and county level data are used to estimate the supply and demand param eters these estimates confirm the plausibility of the conceptual model results from the con tingent valuation literature illustrate the extent of underallocation of land to agriculture due to existing institutional conditions some correc tive measures and their distributional effects are discussed and quantified jel q24

rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma experimental evidence this paper presents experiments designed to examine the sequential equilibrium reputation hypothesis in the finitely repeated prisoner s dilemma the authors test the hypothesis by controlling the subjects ability to build reputations and by manipulating their beliefs that their opponent is irrational or altruistic the responses of subjects strongly support the sequential equilibrium prediction the results also suggest an important role for homemade altruism that is a natural tendency to cooperate that subjects bring to the experiment from the outside the authors find that there may be no difference between the beliefs that an opponent is altruistic and the actual chance it is so copyright 1993 by royal economic society

the impact of decoupled payments on u s cropland values an extensive literature has shown that various farm programs may influence the value of farmland but other studies have not examined the cropland price effects of direct or decoupled payments separate from countercyclical payments this study uses nationally representative confidential field level panel data with farmer reported per acre land values we analyze the impact of decoupled and other farm program payments on farmland values using a fixed effects model and controlling for various factors that influence farmland values we find that an additional dollar of decoupled payments has a large and statistically significant impact on farmland values of about 18 per acre these results are comparable with similar studies undertaken in europe

health insurance as a two part pricing contract monopolies appear throughout health care we show that health insurance operates like a conventional two part pricing contract that allows monopolists to extract profits without inefficiently constraining quantity when insurers are free to offer a range of insurance contracts to different consumer types health insurance markets perfectly eliminate deadweight losses from upstream health care monopolies frictions limiting the sorting of different consumer types into different insurance contracts restore some of these upstream monopoly losses which manifest as higher rates of uninsurance rather than as restrictions in quantity utilized by insured consumers empirical analysis of pharmaceutical patent expiration supports the prediction that heavily insured markets experience little or no efficiency loss under monopoly while less insured markets exhibit behavior more consistent with the standard theory of monopoly

the impact of farmland price changes on farm size and financial structure a modified vickers model is used to show that farmland capital gains provide incentive to increase farm acreage and debt use farmland capital losses have the opposite effect the model indicates that part of the current financial vulnerability of the u s farm sector can be traced to management decisions made in response to the farmland capital gains of the 1970s the effects are not purely tax driven though taxes can affect the magnitude of incentives the vickers model is modified to allow a finite horizon taxes and the recognition of unrealized capital gain or loss

endogenous fluctuations under evolutionary pressure in cournot competition abstract an evolutionary game theoretic model of cournot competition is investigated individuals choose from a finite set of different behavioral rules each rule specifies the quantity to be produced in the current period as a function of past quantities using more sophisticated rules may require extra information costs based upon realized payoffs the fractions of the population choosing a certain behavioral rule are updated according to the replicator equation with noise the long run behavior of the evolutionary system consisting of the population dynamics coupled with the quantity dynamics of the cournot game may be complicated and endogenous fluctuations may arise we consider a typical example where firms can choose between two rules the nash rule and the best reply rule we show that a homoclinic tangency between the stable and unstable manifold of the equilibrium occurs as evolutionary pressure increases implying bifurcation routes to complicated dynamics and strange attractors

an error correcting model of farmland prices granger has demonstrated that if two variables are integrated of order one and are conitegrated they can be modelled as having been generated by an error correction mechanism cointegration and error correction systems allow long run components of variables to obey equilibrium constraints while short run components are allowed to have flexible dynamic specification using data from five corn belt states in the us we show that farmland prices and cash rents are each integrated of order one and are model is estimated the error correction term is found to be significant in both equations indicating granger causality running in both directions historical simulation of the model is performed the price equation peroformed better although both equations simulate reasonably well

the effect of agricultural policy on farmland values the extent to which agricultural support programs have been capitalized into farmland prices has been examined in this study a present value land price model was developed which decomposes returns to the land base into its two possible sources farm production and government subsidies and allows the discount rates associated with these two income sources to vary the empirical results indicate that government payments are discounted less than marketbased returns in ontario thus government payments have been viewed as a more stable source of income to ontario farm operators during the last half century than market based returns

transaction costs and the present value puzzle of farmland prices 1 introduction farmland is by far the dominant asset in the u s agricultural sector s balance sheet accounting for about two thirds of the value of all farm assets usda various years the value of u s farmland was estimated at 593 billion on december 31 1994 or roughly 10 of total market capitalization for firms in the sp clark fulton and scott 1993 tegene and kuchler 1993 this is a puzzling result because the cdr pvm has been widely accepted and generally used for land appraisal purposes beyond this however there is surprisingly little consensus regarding the determinants of farmland prices pope et al 1979 robison and koenig 1992 stare 1995 a major reason for this lack of consensus may be the heterogeneity of the data sets used for empirical analysis different studies use different levels of aggregation different time periods and different land value and rent series hanson and myers 1995 for example use country level data whereas tegene and kuchler 1993 use regional data and just and miranowski 1993 use state level data hanson and myers 1995 use data from 1910 to 1990 shiha and chavas 1995 use data from 1949 to 1990 and brown and brown 1984 use data from 1968 to 1981 falk 1991 examines farmland values and gross cash rents whereas hanson and myers 1995 examine farm real estate values and residual returns to farm real estate another possible explanation for the lack of consensus about farmland pricing and the focus of the present study is the presence of market frictions our motivation for exploring the role that market frictions might play in determining farmland prices is both theoretical and empirical on the theoretical level market frictions drive a wedge between the price at which outsiders wish to buy land and that at which farmers wish to sell it the market price can be anywhere within this wedge and thus can easily deviate from its frictionless present value one can interpret this wedge as a band of inaction delta sup l delta supu inside which farmers neither buy nor sell land even in the face of changing expected returns the band is centered on the price that would prevail in the absence of transaction costs and its width is determined by the size of these costs on the empirical level a review of the literature reveals that the frictionless market assumption is not a realistic representation of how farmland is actually traded although the costs associated with trading many financial assets are small costs incurred in transferring ownership of farmland typically exceed 7 5 of the purchase price to explore the role of market frictions we use the pvm recently used by lence and miller 1999 which explicitly incorporates proportional transaction costs

farm real estate price components 1920 78 the research reported demonstrates that farm real estate price involves important components in addition to the capitalized value of rent for the services of land and buildings in farm production develops an expectations model for the farm real estate market and compares predictions from the expectations model with farm real estate prices for the 1920 78 period capitalized rent explains only about half of real estate values both in the 1970s and over the longer 1920 78 period the remainder can be explained by the capitalization of capital gains including real gains or losses from price level changes

market share and the illusion of power can blue cross force hospitals to discount researchers in health care financing have claimed that large private insurers like blue cross frequently exercise monopsony power to obtain discounts from normal hospital charges they claim that the monopsony power derives from a large blue cross share of a given hospital cost shifting whereby hospitals offset the discount by raising charges to less powerful customers this paper re examines both theoretically and empirically the conditions necessary for a private insurer to extract discounts from a hospital we demonstrate that the theoretical conditions necessary for blue cross to force a discount do not exist in the indiana market using revenue data from 110 indiana hospitals we reject the traditional claim that blue cross pays less than other insurers as a function of market share

econometric modeling of the capitalization formula for farmland prices an econometric model is formulated to explain the dynamic behavior in farmland prices a second order rational distributed lag on net crop share rents received by landlords captures the dynamic movements of prices and performs well in conditional post sample forecasts the adjustment path of land prices in response to a perturbation in rents is a protracted dampened cycle the implicitly estimated tax free capitalization rate on rent associated with equilibrium land price is 4 0 neither the expected rate of inflation nor an exponential trend on rent expectations has a significant effect on land prices