Ownership and rent-seeking behavior in specialty health care practices

Specialty health care practices are unique in that they exhibit a wide range of ownership types, from large corporations controlled by third parties to those directly owned by practitioners (physicians, therapists, etc.). Many of these practices also employ licensed assistants whose labor is partially substitutable with those of the practitioners. This paper presents a theoretical model that examines the impact that different levels of ownership have on rent-seeking behavior and efficiency within specialty practices. Our primary focus is on whether lower levels of ownership induce practitioners to extract larger economic rents by substituting their services for those of their assistants. We find that if the practitioners are not required to be technically efficient then they unambiguously respond to lower ownership with rent-seeking. However, requiring the firm to be technically (but not allocatively) efficient, may be sufficient to mitigate this incentive.efficiency

Relation of annual ring formation to rainfall as illustrated in six species of trees in Marshall county, Indiana

The relation of growth curves to rainfall is not a simple one. Such factors as the following enter to make the relation complex: the time of year when the rains come, the proportion which comes during the growing season, how well they are distributed over the growing season, the topography and its relation to run-off, the character of the soil and its ability to store water from times of abundant to tirnes of inadequate rainfall

Inferring the Latent Incidence of Inefficiency from DEA Estimates and Bayesian Priors

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is among the most popular empirical tools for measuring cost and productive efficiency. Because DEA is a linear programming technique, establishing formal statistical properties for outcomes is difficult. We show that the incidence of inefficiency within a population of Decision Making Units (DMUs) is a latent variable, with DEA outcomes providing only noisy sample-based categorizations of inefficiency. We then use a Bayesian approach to infer an appropriate posterior distribution for the incidence of inefficient DMUs based on a random sample of DEA outcomes and a prior distribution on the incidence of inefficiency. The methodology applies to both finite and infinite populations, and to sampling DMUs with and without replacement, and accounts for the noise in the DEA characterization of inefficiency within a coherent Bayesian approach to the problem. The result is an appropriately up-scaled, noise-adjusted inference regarding the incidence of inefficiency in a population of DMUs.Data Envelopment Analysis, latent inefficiency, Bayesian inference,Beta priors, posterior incidence of inefficiency

Nomenclatorial changes in the genus Solidago--Corrections

In making these changes several errors were made which it is here proposed to correct

Index V.1, 1929

Information about the publication, as well as a table of contents

Book Reviews 202

Various book review

A study of asymmetrical growth from the stumps of Quercus velutina

While securing the material for a study of the relation of rainfall to growth in several species of Quercus it was noted that many stump sections showed a decided asymmetrical growth with the organic center of the section far removed from the geometric center. This led to an inquiry into the factors involved in producing asymmetrical growth in these trees

The genus Trillium in Indiana

The fact that members of the genus Trillium are quite variable is well borne out when one notes the number of reports of variations and teratological conditions in the literature. Such conditions make it important that more detailed critical study be made of members of the genus from the standpoint of their distribution and variation in smaller areas. Studies of the species occurring in wider areas were made by Gleason (19) and Gates (18). More detailed study of particular species in more restricted areas is of considerable value in adding light to the problem of species relationship and delimitation. Such a study was made for North and South Carolina by Peattie (26). The present paper is a similar attempt for the state of Indiana

Index V.4, 1937 - 1940

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