Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Research Publications
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ItemNursing Home Competition, Prices and Quality: A Review and Some Lessons for Australia(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2020-06-01)In recent years, with the aim of containing cost pressure and improving efficiency, many countries have begun to introduce market mechanisms into the aged care sector. Under the right conditions, competition can spur providers to compete by cutting costs, offering better prices and higher quality of services. However, in aged care, market failures can be severe. Information about prices and quality may not be readily available and search costs can be high. This study undertakes a scoping review of the literature on competition in the nursing home sector, with an emphasis on research examining how competition affects prices and quality of care. Online databases were used to identify studies in English language published between 1988–2020. A total of 44 publications covering nine countries are included in this review. On the relationship between competition and quality, the literature offers conflicting evidence. Some studies find greater competition leading to higher quality, while others find the opposite effect. Institutional features such as the presence of binding supply restrictions on nursing homes and public release of information on quality appear to be important considerations. On the price effect of competition, most studies find that greater competition tends to result in lower prices, although the effect is small. The literature offers several lessons for Australia, including whether increasing subsidies can result in higher quality and the role of public reporting of quality ratings in fostering competition.
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ItemHow to reduce the social cost of binge drinking in Australia?(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2020-02-01)There is substantial cross-country evidence that binge drinking has significant social costs. In this study we add to the growing body of evidence on the association between problem drinking and antisocial and unlawful behaviours using data from the Australian National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) administered by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW).
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ItemShould hospital funding be linked to socioeconomic status?(Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2020-07-01)How does socioeconomic status impacts one's health and their access to healthcare? Using records from the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services, this Research Insight classifies patients into four socioeconomic groups according to their use of health and human services. The study also measures hospital use and whether socioeconomic status with in-hospital adverse incidents. The author, Associate Professor Jongsay Yong suggests that hospital funding policy should account for patients' socioeconomic differences.
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ItemA class of demand systems satisfying global regularity and having complete rank flexibility(Springer, 2016)A class of demand systems based on simple parametric specification of the indirect utility functions, but allowing for the parsimonious imposition of global regularity, is proposed. Demand systems in this class are completely flexible in rank, that is, can be potentially specified to acquire as large a rank as required in empirical work. They also exhibit a clear and reasonable homothetic asymptotic behaviour, as income approaches infinity. In an empirical application using Australian data, several examples from this class are estimated and compared with some popular alternatives in the literature.
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ItemBinge Drinking and Antisocial and Unlawful Behaviours in Australia(WILEY, 2016-06)This paper presents individual‐level evidence from Australia to examine the factors associated with binge drinking and several alcohol‐related antisocial and unlawful behaviours. We study in particular the role of binge drinking in increasing the likelihood of engaging in these negative behaviours. We use individual‐level data from a national representative survey and a system econometric model that allows unobservable factors for all negative behaviours to be correlated. Potential misclassification of individuals' drinking pattern is accounted for. We find evidence of under‐reporting for bingeing and significant effects of binge drinking on drink‐driving, physical and verbal abuse, public disturbance, and stealing and damaging property.
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ItemParents' Demand for Sugar Sweetened Beverages for Their Pre-School Children: Evidence from a Stated-Preference Experiment(Oxford University Press (OUP), 2020-03-01)Consumption of sugar sweetened beverages exhibits strong associations with weight gain, obesity, and dental caries, especially in young children. The aim of this article is to estimate price elasticities for parents' sugar-sweetened beverages consumption choices with respect to their pre-school children and to estimate elasticities with respect to nutritional attribute labels across sugar-sweetened beverages. Our results show that 1% increase in the price of fizzy drink, juice and cordial would reduce pre-school children's consumption of each drink by 0.80%, 0.51%, and 0.34% respectively. Such price effects on children's consumption do not substantially differ between high and low-income respondents but the effect on the children's Fizzy Drink consumption is significantly larger for respondents from large households than those from small households and are significantly lower than the price effects on the consumption of the rest of the family for Juice and Cordial. The marginal effects of demand with respect to nutritional attribute labels of sugar-sweetened beverages matter for Juice and Cordial, and are strongest for low-income families; however, these effects do not substantially differ between large and small-household respondents.
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ItemCream skimming: Theory and evidence from hospital transfers and capacity utilization(Elsevier, 2020-05-01)The paper examines cream skimming behaviour by studying hospital transfers in a mixed public-private hospital system. A key innovation is the use of capacity utilization to identify cream skimming. We develop a dynamic model with uncertain patient arrivals and hospital capacity constraints to clarify the conditions under which a profit maximizing hospital will engage in patient selection by transferring ‘hard’ patients—those with severe/complex conditions—to free up capacity to accommodate ‘easy’ patients with few severe/complex conditions. Given finite capacity, public hospitals are strictly less likely to transfer patients than profit-motivated private hospitals at the same level of capacity. We test implications of the model using hospital administrative data from Victoria, Australia, and find empirical support for the cream skimming predictions of the model.
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ItemSocial Network Structure and Risk Sharing in Villages(De Gruyter, 2018-07)This paper studies how the structure of friendship networks affects risk sharing in villages. Using techniques for partially identified econometric models, we construct a sharp bound on the true risk-sharing rate, which takes into account nomination errors in survey responses, and implement interval estimation. We show that the diameter of a network has a negative and significant impact on risk sharing. Our result implies that policymakers can effectively improve risk sharing between households by adopting policies that increase the network connectivity of individuals in the periphery of the social network.