Quality-adjusted Cost Functions and Policy Evaluation in the Nursing Home Industry
提出一种在质量内生且不可观测时识别和估计成本函数的简单方法，发现将质量视为外生会严重误导边际成本和规模经济的估计，对评估养老院监管政策中的成本-质量权衡有重要参考价值。
Proper evaluation of cost-quality trade-offs inherent in regulatory policy requires identifying the structure of production from the behavioral response of quality to the policy change. However, estimating the structure of production with endogenous quality is difficult because of both measurement problems and data availability. The authors develop a simple method for identifying and estimating cost functions in the presence of endogenous and unobserved quality. Using this method, they estimate that a quality-adjusted cost function for nursing homes treating quality as exogenous yields seriously misleading estimates of marginal cost and economies of scale. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.