This paper is the first to investigate both the technical and cost efficiency of more than 1500 German general hospitals. More specifically, it deals with the question how hospital efficiency varies with ownership, patient structure, and other exogenous factors, which are neither inputs to nor outputs of the production process. The empirical results for the years from 2001 to 2003 indicate that private and non-profit hospitals are on average less cost efficient and less technically efficient than publicly owned hospitals. The hospital rankings based on estimated efficiency scores turn out to be negatively correlated with average length of stay, which is highest in private hospitals. The results are derived by conducting a Stochastic Frontier Analysis assuming both Cobb-Douglas and translog production technologies and using a newly available and multifaceted administrative German data set.

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This paper investigates the cost and profit efficiency of German hospitals and their variation with ownership type. It is motivated by the empirical finding that private (for-profit) hospitals - having been shown to be less cost efficient in the past - on average earn higher profits than public hospitals. We conduct a Stochastic Frontier Analysis on a multifaceted administrative German data set combined with the balance sheets of 541 hospitals of the years 2002-2006. The results show no significant differences in cost efficiency but higher profit efficiency of private than of publicly owned hospitals.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu Preliminary version. Please do not cite! Abstract We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel data set containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 700 antidiabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of demand and, based on an oligopolistic model of multiproduct rms, we then recover the marginal costs and mark-ups. We nally evaluate the eect of the parallel imports' policy by calculating a counter-factual scenario without parallel trade. According to our estimates, parallel imports reduce the prices for patented and generic drugs by 39% and 0.05%, respectively. This amounts to an increase in the demandside surplus by e11.4 million per year which is relatively small compared to the market size of around e470 million. Manufacturers of original drugs, instead, lose more than half of their variable prots when parallel trade is allowed and only a small fraction of these rents are appropriated by the parallel importers. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may

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