Reputational concerns with altruistic providers.

We study a model of reputational concerns when doctors differ in their degree of altruism and they can signal their altruism by their (observable) quality. When reputational concerns are high, following the introduction or enhancement of public reporting, the less altruistic (bad) doctor mimics the more altruistic (good) doctor. Otherwise, either a separating or a semi-separating equilibrium arises: the bad doctor mimics the good doctor with probability less than one.

External referencing and pharmaceutical price negotiation.

External referencing (ER) imposes a price cap for pharmaceuticals, based on prices of identical or comparable products in foreign countries. Suppose a foreign country (F) negotiates prices with a pharmaceutical firm, whereas a home country (H) can either negotiate prices independently or implement ER, based on the foreign price. We show that country H prefers ER if copayments in H are relatively high.

Competition among differentiated health plans under adverse selection.

Market power and adverse selection are prevalent features of the market for pre-paid health plans. However, most of the literature on adverse selection considers extreme cases: either perfect competition or monopoly. If instead health plans are horizontally differentiated, then (i) profits derived from each low risk are higher than from each high risk and (ii) when the profits derived from each high risk are negative (cross-subsidization), a health authority as informed as the health plans can implement a Pareto-improvement.