Imitative Pricing: The Importance of Neighborhood Effects in Physicians' Consultation Prices

Benjamin Montmartin and Marcos Herrera-Gómez

No 2022-02, GREDEG Working Papers from Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France

Abstract: During the last 30 years in France, concerns about healthcare access have grown as physician fees have increased threefold. In this paper, we developed an innovative structural framework to provide new insights into free-billing physician pricing behavior. We test our theoretical framework using a unique geolocalized database covering more than 4,000 private practitioners in three specializations (ophthalmology, gynecology and pediatrics). Our main findings highlight a low price competition environment driven by local imitative pricing between physicians, which increases with competition density. This evidence in the context of growing spatial concentration and an increasing share of free-billing physicians calls for new policies to limit additional fees.

Keywords: Imitative pricing; Health care access; Local competition; Spatial effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 H51 I11 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2022-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-hea and nep-ure
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http://195.220.190.85/GREDEG-WP-2022-02.pdf First version, 2022 (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Imitative Pricing: the Importance of Neighborhood Effects in Physicians’ Consultation Prices (2022)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gre:wpaper:2022-02

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