Search results

Researchers recommend a reorganization of the medical profession into larger groups with a multispecialty mix. We analyze whether there is evidence for the superiority of these models and if this organizational transformation is underway.

We summarize the evidence on scale and scope economies in physician group practice, and then review the trends in physician group size and specialty mix to conduct survivorship tests of the most efficient models.

The distribution of physician groups exhibits two interesting tails. In the lower tail, a large percentage of physicians continue to practice in small, physician-owned practices. In the upper tail, there is a small but rapidly growing percentage of large groups that have been organized primarily by non-physician owners.

While our analysis includes no original data, it does collate all known surveys of physician practice characteristics and group practice formation to provide a consistent picture of physician organization.

Our review suggests that scale and scope economies in physician practice are limited. This may explain why most physicians have retained their small practices.

Larger, multispecialty groups have been primarily organized by non-physician owners in vertically integrated arrangements. There is little evidence supporting the efficiencies of such models and some concern they may pose anticompetitive threats.

This is the first comprehensive review of the scale and scope economies of physician practice in nearly two decades. The research results do not appear to have changed much; nor has much changed in physician practice organization.

From one angle, abortion law appears to confirm the regime politics account of the Supreme Court; after all, the Reagan/Bush coalition succeeded in significantly curtailing the constitutional protection of abortion rights. From another angle, however, it is puzzling that the Reagan/Bush Court repeatedly refused to overturn Roe v. Wade. We argue that time and again electoral considerations led Republican elites to back away from a forceful assertion of their agenda for constitutional change. As a result, the justices generally acted within the range of possibilities acceptable to the governing regime but still typically had multiple doctrinal options from which to choose.

Rates of less perceptible social–behavioral–emotional disorders thought to be based in neurobiological brain differences have burgeoned, though much of disability studies remains focused on the need to challenge compulsory able-bodiedness. This chapter examines instead diverse families living with adult sons’ and daughters’ invisible disabilities, asking how mothers may challenge compulsory able-mindedness.

This chapter is based on 15 in-depth interviews conducted in 2017 and 2018 with mothers originally interviewed between 2003 and 2008.

The accounts foreground tensions for those at the boundaries of “normality” in a culture that valorizes citizen’s independence, productivity, and heroic overcoming of any inability. Mothers of “precariously normal” adult sons and daughters invited to reflect on their earlier accounts reveal both the power of such dominant narratives and the possibilities to disrupt and challenge this public storytelling.

Findings of this study point to the alternative narratives and identities sought by disability studies and bring invisible social–behavioral–emotional disabilities into discussions that have largely centered on visible physical disabilities. These findings also underscore the complex similarities and differences in families’ experiences of disability across class and race divides, while suggesting the need for institutional change and greater, less punitive, public resources.

In class action antitrust litigation, the standards for acceptable economic analysis at class certification have continued to evolve. The most recent event in this evolution is the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, 133 S. Ct. 1435 (2013). The evolution of pre-Comcast law on this topic is presented, the Comcast decision is thoroughly assessed, as are the standards for developing reliable economic analysis. This article explains how economic evidence of both antitrust liability and damages ought to be developed in light of the teachings of Comcast, and how liability evidence can be used by economists to support a finding of common impact for certification purposes. In addition, the article addresses how statistical techniques such as averaging, price-dispersion analysis, and multiple regressions have and should be employed to establish common proof of damages.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.

In recent years, the issue of human trafficking has become a key component of a growing number of corporate social responsibility initiatives, in which multinational corporations have furthered the pursuit of “market based solutions” to contemporary social concerns. This essay draws upon in-depth interviews with and ethnographic observations of corporate actors involved in contemporary anti-trafficking campaigns to describe a new domain of sexual politics that feminist social theorists have barely begun to consider. Using trafficking as a case study, I argue that these new forms of sexual politics have served to bind together unlikely sets of social actors – including secular feminists, evangelical Christians, bipartisan state officials, and multinational corporations – who have historically subscribed to very different ideals about the beneficence of markets, criminal justice, and the role of the state.