Ấn phẩm:
Oganixation of dental care industry
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Tóm tắt
This research examines the organization of the dental care industry in two different aspects: the competition among dental care providers at practice level and the earnings of dentists at individual level. The dental care market in the United States is mainly made up of numerous private solo practice providers. However, it could not be characterized as the perfectly competitive market due to the complexity in the relationship among consumers, sellers, and payers, as well as the professional regulations. Chapter one uses repeat cross-section data from 1981 to 2011 of the American Dental Association Survey of Dental Practice (SDP) to estimate the degree of market power in the private dental practice, how it has changed over time, and the extent of any economies of scale in the provision of dental services. I identify market power by estimating an index measuring the ability of a firm to markup the price above the marginal cost. This parameter is estimated from the price index, the demand function and the system of equations including the cost function and labor input factor demand functions. Both specifications of flexible cost functions - the generalized Leontief and the translog cost functions – show that the dentist services market is monopolistic competitive while the hygienist services market is close to perfectly competitive. I also find that private dental practice shows significant economies of scale and demand for dental services are inelastic. The results provide important information about practice organization and pricing behaviors for public welfare and reimbursement policy. Chapter two explores the gender difference in dentist earnings. Previous research found an unexplained gap when accounted for age, experience, working hours, parental status, region and race. Using national data of the Survey of Dental Practice from 1982 to 2012, I add specialty, entrepreneurship, productivity, and practice size to the explanatory factors for more complete specification. I also use the census data and the American Community Survey data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series to examine the role of race, marital status, and parental status, which are not available in the SDP. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition finds the earnings gap in the SDP data reducing from 74% in 1982-1986 to 31% in 2007-2011, with the decrease in the explaining role of observable characteristics from 40% to 4% and the relatively consistent unexplained part contributing to 23%-29% of the differential. The census data shows a larger earnings gap, which could be explained by the lower percentage of female dentists as practice owners as compared to the SDP data. Race, marital status, and parental status are unobservable in the SDP analysis, but the census analysis shows that these factors only explain for 4-6% of the earnings difference. Thus, if all factors are combined in an analysis, I still expect an unexplained earnings difference of about 20% which remains relatively unchanged over time. The semiparametric DiNardo-Fortin-Lemieux approach finds that the observable characteristics have stronger effect on the gap for dentists with lower earnings; while for those at higher earnings distribution, the unexplained gap is large and consistent.
Mô tả
133 p.
Tác giả
Nguyễn, Lê Thanh An.
Người hướng dẫn
Nơi xuất bản
Nhà xuất bản
Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago
Năm xuất bản
2015
ISSN tạp chí
Nhan đề tập
Từ khóa chủ đề
Dental care. , Chăm sóc răng miệng.