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Altruism.

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Altruism

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The hospital market is served by firms that are private for-profit, private not-for-profit, and government-owned and operated. I use a plausibly exogenous change in hospital financing that was intended to improve medical care for the poor to test three theories of organizational behavior. My results reveal that the critical difference between the three types of hospitals owes to the soft budget constraint of government-owned institutions. The decision-makers in private not-for-profit hospitals are just as responsive to financial incentives and are no more altruistic than their counterparts in profit-maximizing facilities. My final set of results suggests that the significant increase in public medical spending examined in this paper did not improve health outcomes for the indigent.

Altruism.

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This paper studies the political-economic equilibrium of a two-period model with overlapping generations. In each period the policy is chosen under majority rule by the generations currently alive. The paper identifies a "sustainable set" of values for public debt. Any amount of debt within this set is fully repaid in equilibrium, even in the absence of commitments. By issuing debt within this set, the first generation of voters redistributes revenue in its favor and away from the second generation. The paper characterizes the determinants of the equilibrium intergenerational redistribution carried out in this way, and points to a difference between debt policy and social security legislation as instruments of redistribution. The key features of the model are heterogeneity within each generation and altruism across generations.

Altruism.

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Some risky medical treatments confer no benefit on the patient who undergoes the intervention though they do benefit third parties. It is commonly thought to be unethical for doctors to provide such treatments even if the patient agrees to undergo them; doing so violates the requirement that medical professionals provide only treatments that are in the best interests of the patient. I present a case for revising this requirement so as to allow individuals to undergo risky medical treatments for the benefit of others.

Altruism.