Register: https://forms.gle/WAWi67djmikN7GtJ6 

About the talk:
Privatization has been shown to improve the efficiency and growth of public firms. However, the effects for consumers are understudied. We study potential trade-offs in the case of US hospitals, where public control of capacity declined by 42% over 1983–2019. Across 257 transitions, privatized hospitals downsize capacity and patient care, with Medicaid patients experiencing the greatest decline. While other patients are reallocated across facilities, Medicaid patients experience an aggregate decline in utilization at the market-level, which we interpret as a decline in access. Private control substantially decreases labor intensity and related spending, consistent with a trade-off between maintaining access and lowering costs.

About the speaker:
Mark Duggan, Ph.D. is The Trione Director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and The Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1999. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Professor Duggan's research focuses on the health care sector and also on the effects of government expenditure programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the behavior of individuals and firms.