Activity‐based funding reform and the performance of public hospitals: The case of Queensland, Australia
利用澳大利亚昆士兰州的自然实验，通过数据包络分析和双重差分法，发现基于活动的资金改革提高了公立医院的技术效率。
Abstract This study investigates the impact of activity‐based funding (ABF) on the performance of hospitals by exploiting a natural experiment that happened in the state of Queensland, Australia. To examine the outcome of the reform, the performance of hospitals is measured by the technical efficiency estimated from data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. We try to identify the causal effect of ABF on the technical efficiency of hospitals by incorporating difference‐in‐differences approach in the popular two‐stage DEA framework. We find empirical evidence that ABF improves the technical efficiency of hospitals.