 Scale and scope economies in nursing homes: A quantile regression approachEric W. Christensen Health Economics, 2004, vol. 13, issue 4, 363-377 Abstract: Nursing homes vary widely between facilities with very few beds and facilities with several hundred beds. Previous studies, which estimate nursing home scale and scope economies, do not account for this heterogeneity and implicitly assume that all nursing homes face the same cost structure. To account for heterogeneity, this paper uses quantile regression to estimate cost functions for skilled and intermediate care nursing homes. The results show that the parameters of nursing home cost functions vary significantly by output mix and across the cost distribution. Estimates show that product‐specific scale economies systematically increase across the cost distribution for both skilled and intermediate care facilities, with diseconomies of scale in the lower deciles and no significant scale economies in the higher deciles. As for ray scale economies, estimates show economies of scale in the lower deciles and diseconomies of scale or no significant scale economies at higher deciles. The estimates also show that scope economies exist in the lower cost deciles and that no scope economies exist in the higher cost deciles. Additionally, the degree of scope economies monotonically decreases across the deciles. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Date: 2004 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:13:y:2004:i:4:p:363-377 Access Statistics for this article Health Economics is currently edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.