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Does Competition Improve Service Quality? The Case of Nursing Homes Where Public and Private Payers Coexist
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Does Competition Improve Service Quality? The Case of Nursing Homes Where Public and Private Payers Coexist

Susan Feng Lu, Konstantinos Serfes, Gerard Wedig and Bingxiao Wu
Management science, v 67(10), pp 6493-6512
01 Oct 2021

Abstract

Business & Economics Management Operations Research & Management Science Science & Technology Social Sciences Technology
Competition plays an ambiguous role in nursing home markets where public and private payers coexist. Using U.S. nursing home data with a wide range of market structures, we find a U-shaped relationship between competition and service quality when nursing homes serve a mix of public and private segments, and a monotonically increasing relationship when nursing homes mostly serve the public, price-regulated, segment. The outcomes can be explained by the interplay of two opposing effects of competition: the reputation-building effect, whereby competing firms choose high quality to build a good reputation, and the rent-extraction effect, whereby competition hinders investment for quality improvements by lowering price premia. These observations are consistent with a repeated game model that incorporates public and private-payer segments.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Management
Operations Research & Management Science
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