Insurance

Opening the Black Box: The Hidden Costs of Data-Driven Mergers in Health Care

Vertical data-driven mergers between health insurers and drug suppliers may facilitate health insurers’ efforts to discriminate against vulnerable populations, leaving them without...

“The Way Insurance Companies Have Rigged Our Health Care System, They’re Probably Going to Emerge as Financial Winners from This”

Author and former health insurance executive Wendell Potter explains to ProMarket why the employer-based health care system in the US is “collapsing” and why health...

An Alternative to Complete Shutdown: Let Younger People Work

The mortality rate of Covid-19 is rising with age. The cost of the economic shutdown declines with the number of people not subject to the shutdown. Consequently,...

Hospital Mergers: The Forgotten Problem of American Health Care

In the US, there are more than 100 hospital mergers every year. This increasing concentration does not lead to the promised savings, nor to...

Algorithms and AI Are Radically Changing Insurance. Regulators Are Behind the Curve

The growing use of artificial intelligence to price insurance could erode basic legal protections built into the law to protect both individuals and the...

LATEST NEWS

Revising the Merger Guidelines To Return Antitrust to a Sound Economic and Legal Foundation

The draft Merger Guidelines largely replace the consumer welfare standard of the Chicago School with the lessening of competition principle found in the 1914 Clayton Act. This shift would enable the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice Antitrust Division to utilize the full extent of modern economics to respond to rising concentration and its harmful effects, writes John Kwoka.

How Anthony Downs’s Analysis Explains Rational Voters’ Preferences for Populism

In new research, Cyril Hédoin and Alexandre Chirat use the rational-choice theory of economist Anthony Downs to explain how populism rationally arises to challenge established institutions of liberal democracy.

The Impact of Large Institutional Investors on Innovation Is Not as Positive as One Might Expect

In a new paper, Bing Guo, Dennis C. Hutschenreiter, David Pérez-Castrillo, and Anna Toldrà-Simats study how large institutional investors impact firm innovation. The authors find that large institutional investors encourage internal research and development but discourage firm acquisitions that would add patents and knowledge to their firms’ portfolios, hampering overall innovation.

The FTC Needs To Focus Arguments on Technological Transitions After High-Profile Losses

Joshua Gray and Cristian Santesteban argue that the Federal Trade Commission's focus in Meta-Within and Microsoft-Activision on narrow markets like VR fitness apps and consoles missed the boat on the real competition issue: the threat to future competition in nascent markets like VR platforms and cloud gaming.

We Need Better Research on the Relationship Between Market Power and Productivity in the Hospital Industry

Antitrust debates have largely ignored questions about the relationship between market power and productivity, and scholars have provided little guidance on the issue due to data limitations. However, data is plentiful on the hospital industry for both market power and operating costs and productivity, and researchers need to take advantage, writes David Ennis.