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Title: Organization of Dental Care Industry

Citation Type: Dissertation/Thesis

Publication Year: 2015

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Abstract: The dental care market in the United States is mainly made up of numerous private solo practice providers. However, it could not be characterized as the perfectly competitive market due to the complexity in the relationship among consumers, sellers, and payers, as well as the professional regulations. Chapter one uses repeat cross-section data from 1981 to 2011 of the American Dental Association Survey of Dental Practice (SDP) to estimate the degree of market power in the private dental practice, how it has changed over time, and the extent of any economies of scale in the provision of dental services. I identify market power by estimating an index measuring the ability of a firm to markup the price above the marginal cost. This parameter is estimated from the price index, the demand function and the system of equations including the cost function and labor input factor demand functions. Both specifications of flexible cost functions - the generalized Leontief and the translog cost functions - show that the dentist services market is monopolistic competitive while the hygienist services market is close to perfectly competitive. I also find that private dental practice shows significant economies of scale and demand for dental services are inelastic. The results provide important information about practice organization and pricing behaviors for public welfare and reimbursement policy

Url: http://indigo.uic.edu/bitstream/handle/10027/19742/NguyenLe_ThanhAn.pdf?sequence=1

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Authors: Nguyen-Le, Thanh-an

Institution: University of Illinois at Chicago

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Publisher Location: Chicago, Illinois

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Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Health, Other

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