During the 1980s, the pendulum swung back from the socialism doctrinaire that dominated the post war period, where public ownership of the productive and services sectors was emphasized. In the early 1980s, new values emerged questioning the role of the state in economic activities. As a result, the pressures mounted to shift to market economy and to rely on private initiatives to spearhead the...

Quality problems have long plagued the nursing home industry. While two-thirds of U.S. nursing homes are investor-owned, few studies have examined the impact of investor-ownership on the quality of care. The authors analyzed 1998 data from inspections of 13,693 nursing facilities representing virtually all U.S. nursing homes. They grouped deficiency citations issued by inspectors into three cat...

We discuss the relative merits of public and private ownership. Our starting point is the analysis of Hart, Schleifer and Vishney (HSV), who apply an incomplete contract framework to study the difference between private and public ownership. Our analysis departs from HSV’s model in two aspects. First, we allow for cost-sharing contracts between the government and the firm. Second, we assume tha...

The health care industry makes a unique contribution to the potential public health and environmental impacts of sewage sludge production and disposal. As materials flow into and out of health care facilities, potentially hazardous substances, like mercury, solvents, and pharmaceutical compounds, are introduced into the waste stream and ultimately into sewage sludge. Although the hazards posed ...

Politicians in‡uence the allocation of …nance either directly via state banks, or indirectly via private banks using banking regulation or creditor rights. With state ownership of banks, entrepreneurs may form coalitions to bribe politicians to obtain scarce loans. With private ownership of banks, interest groups may lobby to in‡uence creditor rights to limit access to less established …rms. Wh...

Consider two parties who can make non-contractible investments in the provision of a public good. Who should own physical assets needed to provide good? In literature it has been argued that party values good most be owner, regardless investment technologies. Yet, this result derived under assumption symmetric information. We show technology matters when negotiations over take place asymmetric ...

Over the last 20 years, acute-care hospitals in most OECD countries have built up costly overcapacities. From the perspective of economic policy, it is desirable to know how hospitals of different ownership forms respond to changes in demand and are probably best suited to deal with existing overcapacities. This article examines ownership-specific differences in the responsiveness to changes in...

Title: Domicology: Human Structural Abandonment Author: Hafsa Khan Abstract: Many Midwestern cities have suffered decline, resulting in widespread residential, commercial, and industrial property abandonment. In Muskegon County, 3,312 housing units are either unoccupied, not for sale, not for rent, or are not in seasonal or occasional use. The current system of private property ownership encour...

Evaluating the Effect of Ownership Status on Hospital Quality: The Key Role of Innovative Procedures Mortality differences between university, non-teaching public and for-profit hospitals are investigated using a French exhaustive administrative dataset on patients admitted for heart attack. Our results show that innovative procedures play a key role in explaining the effect of ownership status...