Why is Distance Important for Hospital Choice? Separating Home Bias From Transport Costs*
利用分娩医院选择数据，通过固定效应控制家庭偏好后，交通成本对需求的影响比标准模型低40%，并发现转诊是家庭偏好的来源，这对医院合并、网络充分性和距离与质量权衡等政策问题有影响。
In retail and health care markets, demand declines with geographic distance to the establishment, but either transport costs or preferences correlated with distance (‘home bias’) could cause this decline. Using hospital choices for childbirth, we find that, after controlling for home bias using fixed effects, estimates of the transport cost disutility fall by 40% relative to a standard logit model. We show that referrals are a likely source of home bias. We then show that home bias matters for policy questions including a simulated hospital merger, network adequacy concerns, and the tradeoff between distance and quality.