Identifying Sources of Inefficiency in Healthcare*
研究了医院间治疗率差异的原因，区分了不必要的变异和比较优势导致的差异，发现多数医院因错误认知而过度治疗，消除低效可使治疗总收益增加44%。
Abstract In medicine, the reasons for variation in treatment rates across hospitals serving similar patients are not well understood. Some interpret this variation as unwarranted and push standardization of care as a way of reducing allocative inefficiency. An alternative interpretation is that hospitals with greater expertise in a treatment use it more because of their comparative advantage, suggesting that standardization is misguided. A simple economic model provides an empirical framework to separate these explanations. Estimating this model with data for heart attack patients, we find evidence of substantial variation across hospitals in allocative inefficiency and comparative advantage, with most hospitals overusing treatment in part because of incorrect beliefs about their comparative advantage. A stylized welfare calculation suggests that eliminating allocative inefficiency would increase the total benefits from the treatment that we study by 44%.