The proposed project's long-term objective is to inform policy makers and antitrust officials as to whether nonprofit hospitals can be expected to exercise market power in the way they price services. The project is designed to address in a timely manner the current debate over the appropriate antitrust enforcement policy for mergers between nonprofit hospitals.
Specific aims of the project are to examine the statistical relationship between market concentration and the pricing patterns of nonprofit hospitals, and assess whether any observed relationship between market concentration and the pricing patterns of nonprofit hospitals is mediated by a hospital's community and organizational characteristics. The study will capitalize on state-level data bases that the investigators have developed for Florida and California. The statistical relationship between market structure and hospital pricing patterns will be tested using a pooled time-series and cross-sectional data structure. The data will cover the time period of 1990 to 1996.
