Saturday, July 24

Like the Soviet economy, only less rational

Last week's issue of The Economist (June 15th) had a survey of health care economics (registration required for some articles). They note an agency problem from hell:


In this third-party-payer market, doctors play an ambivalent role: they both supply medical care and demand it on behalf of their patients. This can create “supplier-induced demand”. Victor Fuchs draws an analogy with the car market. Suppose, he says, car dealers had to certify whether you needed a new car, and you were not paying for it directly out of your own pocket: there would be a lot more luxury cars around.


Stalin didn't bother with proper price mechanisms or labor incentives either, but at least he would shoot the managers of factories that were not productive.

1 comment:

Lacey said...

Very nice ppost