Miraldo Marisa
Imperial College Business School, Imperial College, London, UK.
J Health Econ. 2009 Jan;28(1):176-97. doi: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2008.09.006. Epub 2008 Oct 4.
Within a horizontal differentiation model and allowing for heterogeneous qualities, we analyze the effects of reference pricing reimbursement on firms' pricing strategies. With this analysis we find inherent incentives for firms' pricing behavior, and consequently we shed some light on the time consistency of such policy. The analysis encompasses different reference price rules: (i) reference price as the minimum of the observed prices in the market, (ii) reference price as a linear combination of firms' prices. Results show that under the "minimum policy" firms are not able to coordinate on higher prices while the "linear policy", implicitly, provides a coordination device. We have also found that, relatively to the "linear policy", when the reference price is the minimum of observed prices, after policy implementation, total and private expenditures are higher and consumer surplus and firms' profits are lower. With quality differentiation both the minimum and linear policies unambiguously lead to higher prices.
在一个水平差异化模型中，并考虑到产品质量的异质性，我们分析了参考定价报销对企业定价策略的影响。通过这一分析，我们发现了企业定价行为的内在激励因素，从而对该政策的时间一致性有了一定的了解。该分析涵盖了不同的参考价格规则：（i）参考价格为市场上观察到的最低价格，（ii）参考价格为企业价格的线性组合。结果表明，在“最低政策”下，企业无法就更高的价格进行协调，而“线性政策”则隐含地提供了一种协调机制。我们还发现，相对于“线性政策”，当参考价格为观察到的最低价格时，政策实施后，总支出和私人支出会更高，消费者剩余和企业利润会更低。在存在质量差异的情况下，最低政策和线性政策都会明确导致更高的价格。
