Market Size and Trade in Medical Services

Jonathan Dingel, Joshua Gottlieb, Maya Lozinski () and Pauline Mourot ()
Additional contact information
Maya Lozinski: https://harris.uchicago.edu/directory/maya-lozinski

No 68, Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Abstract: We measure the importance of increasing returns to scale and trade in medical services. Using Medicare claims data, we document that “imported” medical care—services produced by a medical provider in a different region—constitute about one-fifth of US healthcare consumption. Larger regions specialize in producing less common procedures, which are traded more. These patterns reflect economies of scale: larger regions produce higher-quality services because they serve more patients. Because of increasing returns and trade costs, policies to improve access to care face a proximity-concentration tradeoff. Production subsidies and travel subsidies can impose contrasting spillovers on neighboring regions.

Keywords: Market-size effects; Trade in services; Medicare claims data; Healthcare access (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F14 I11 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-04-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo, nep-ind and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/working-papers-institute/iwp68.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Market Size and Trade in Medical Services (2023)
Working Paper: Market Size and Trade in Medical Services (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedmoi:95935

DOI: 10.21034/iwp.68

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Opportunity and Inclusive Growth Institute Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kate Hansel ().