Productivity Dispersion in Medicine and Manufacturing
研究发现美国医院治疗心脏病发作的生产率离散度甚至小于某些制造业（如预拌混凝土），挑战了医疗行业因市场力量弱而生产率差异大的传统观点。
The conventional wisdom in health economics is that large differences in average productivity across US hospitals are the result of idiosyncratic features of the healthcare sector which dull the role of market forces. Strikingly, however, we find that productivity dispersion in heart attack treatment across hospitals is, if anything, smaller than in narrowly defined manufacturing industries such as ready-mixed concrete. While this fact admits multiple interpretations, it suggests that healthcare may have more in common with “traditional” sectors than is often assumed, and relatedly, that insights from research on productivity and allocation in other sectors may enrich analysis of healthcare.