Volume 9, Number 1 (Winter) 1974
Ehrenberg, Ronald G. 1974. "Organizational Control and the Economic Efficiency of Hospitals: The Production of Nursing Services." Journal of Human Resources 9(1):21-32.
This study presents estimates of hospitals' wage elasticities of demand for registered and licensed practical nurses, utilizing a cross-section sample of over 2,000 hospitals. Attempts are made to ascertain if these elasticities, and the extent to which hospitals substitute across classes of nurses, vary across types (public, private not-for-profit, or private-for-profit) and size of hospitals. Tentative implications of the research relating to the economic and technical efficiency of hospitals are discussed.
The author is Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The author is grateful to the American Hospital Association for providing the data and, without implicating them for what remains, to Victor Fuchs, James Kindahl, Mark Pauly, and two referees for commenting on earlier versions of the paper.
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