A view often expressed about patient choice of health care providers is that it will increase competition between providers, which benefits the efficiency of the health system. We address here a patient choice initiative, regarding selection of hospital for specialty consultations, in the Portuguese National Health Service (NHS) that has two specific features. The first feature involves shared decision making between patients and GPs, in the choice of hospital for referral, which should be based on publicly available information on “quality”. The second specific feature is that the patient choice initiative did not involve payment changes to NHS hospitals associated with patients’ movements. We show that explaining initial asymmetries in qualities (waiting times) with systematic differences in hospital characteristics (cost advantages and managerial talent) leads to potential asymmetric responses to the introduction of patient choice in the NHS. This implies that the empirical analysis has to accommodate such asymmetries. Explicitly allowing for asymmetries in responses to the policy measure reveals that reactions were indeed different, with top-performance hospitals reducing their qualities (increasing waiting times) after the patient choice initiative was introduced.

We assess the impact of Portugal’s recent banking liberalization on competition. We depart from the existing literature and test for competition on both the deposits and loans markets. We focus on the period after interest rate liberalization and show that competition increased mainly as a result of the changes in the deposits market. Furthermore, we show that, in the loans market, bank conduct was significantly more collusive than Nash behavior.

Duas justificações são frequentemente apresentadas para a existência de um teste intermedio nas normas de classificação em disciplinas do ensino superior. Por um lado, a realização de um teste intermedio permite reduzir a incerteza associada a nota final – teoria do professor benevolente. Por outro lado, constitui uma forma de induzir um maior esforço de estudo nos alunos - em teoria do professor exigente. No presente artigo são analisadas as condições em que cada uma das teorias e consistente com a observação frequente de uma maior ponderação dada ao exame final. No caso da teoria do professor benevolente, estas condições assumem uma forma facilmente testável. Realiza-se assim uma análise empírica simples. Esta revela que consoante o curso se verifica consistência com uma ou com outra teoria. Não se detecta, na pequena amostra considerada, uma predominância clara de qualquer das teorias.

Our concern is about a firm-specific industrial policy. When R&D subsidies or taxes are differentiated among firms, the question arises which firms in an industry should receive such support. We analyze a situation where firms differ in their R&D to in two distinct ways. They differ both in the costs of performing R&D activities and in the output obtained from such activities. The introduction of several domestic firms creates a corrective motive for government intervention with the firms' R&D activities in addition to Spencer and Brander's strategic motive. We find that the optimal firm-specific industrial policy. is affected differently by the two sources of firm heterogeneity. Another finding is that a change in a firm's R&D productivity has an ambiguous effect on the optimal policy towards the firm.

We purport to assess the effects of market integration when preferences for the foreign good differ across domestic consumers. We consider a characteristics line with two locations at the end points (countries). Consumers are in one or in the other country, with zero density otherwise. Preference for the foreign good varies across consumers. We show that while the pre-integration equilibrium had two-way trade, induced by taste differences, the post-integration equilibrium may have two-way trade or one-way trade. The one-way trade runs from the small country to the big economy. Welfare effects of market integration are also addressed.

This paper examines the incentive to adopt a new technology given by some popular reimbursement systems, namely cost reimbursement and DRG reimbursement. Adoption is based on a cost-benefit criterion. We find that retrospective payment systems require a large enough patient benefit to yield adoption, while under DRG, adoption may arise in the absence of patients benefits when the differential reimbursement for the old vs. new technology is large enough. Also, cost reimbursement leads to higher adoption under some conditions on the differential reimbursement levels and patient benefits. In policy terms, cost reimbursement system may be more effective than a DRG payment system. This gives a new dimension to the discussion of prospective vs. retrospective payment systems of the last decades centered on the debate of quality vs. cost containment.