Martin Gaynor
University Professor Carnegie Mellon University
- Pittsburgh PA
Martin Gaynor's research focuses on competition and antitrust policy, particularly in health care markets.
Biography
He is one of the founders of the Health Care Cost Institute, an independent non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing knowledge about U.S. health care spending, and served as the first Chair of its governing board. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an International Research Fellow at the University of Bristol. Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon Dr. Gaynor held faculty appointments at Johns Hopkins and a number of other universities. He has been an invited visitor at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Northwestern University, and the Toulouse School of Economics.
His research focuses on competition and antitrust policy, particularly in health care markets. He has written extensively on this topic, testified before Congress, and advised the governments of the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and South Africa on competition issues in health care. Gaynor is on the Pennsylvania Governor’s Health Advisory Board and co-chaired the state’s workgroup on shoppable care. He has won a number of awards for his research, including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy Best Paper Award, the Victor R. Fuchs Research Award, the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation Health Care Research Award, the Kenneth J. Arrow Award, the Jerry S. Cohen Award for Antitrust Scholarship (finalist), and a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research. Dr. Gaynor received his B.A. from the University of California, San Diego in 1977 and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1983.
Areas of Expertise
Media Appearances
When Hospitals Buy Doctor Practices, Do Prices Always Rise?
Bloomberg online
2022-01-19
What happens when physicians are employed by hospitals, rather than working independently? Over the past decade, the share of doctors practicing on their own has declined markedly. Many antitrust advocates are concerned that nothing good will happen as a result, and the Federal Trade Commission is studying the situation. But new research suggests that the shift may bring more benefits than expected, at least for specialist doctors.
How Effective Is the Government’s Campaign Against Hospital Mergers?
ProPublica online
2022-10-28
Employees’ health care costs are also rising rapidly, a trend expected to continue in 2023. “Workers’ contribution to family health insurance premiums grew 259 percent from 1998 to 2018, while nominal average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory workers grew by only 68 percent,” according to a 2020 paper by economist Martin Gaynor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and a founder of the Health Care Cost Institute.
How COVID-19 Changed Hospital Care
Money.com online
2022-07-06
The industry was already trending this way, according to testimony from Martin Gaynor, a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, at a congressional hearing last May. There have been more than 450 hospital mergers in the last decade, according to Gaynor.
Hospitals embrace mergers as path to survival
Trib Total Media online
2022-11-28
Those concerns were expressed in a 2021 statement from Martin Gaynor, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary’s Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights.
Farzad Mostashari, Aledade, on the power of primary care
Medium online
2023-01-09
Farzad also spoke to the importance of independent providers adding competition to healthcare markets, the idea being that independent providers joining larger health systems will reduce competition and raise prices, and said that physicians have drifted towards joining larger physician groups rather than hospitals or health systems. Alongside health economists Martin Gaynor and Paul Ginsburg, Farzad published a series of recommendations and Forbes op-ed detailing policy changes that would improve competition in the healthcare industry.
Media
Social
Industry Expertise
Accomplishments
Victor R. Fuchs Research Award
2007
Kenneth J. Arrow Award for Best Published Paper in Health Economics
2017
Best Paper Award
2016
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
Education
University of California, San Diego
B.A.
Economics
1977
cum laude
Northwestern University
M.A.
Economics
1979
Northwestern University
Ph.D.
Economics
1983
Affiliations
- Committee on Economic Statistics, American Economic Association : Member
- Governor’s Health Advisory Board, Pennsylvania Governor’s Office : Member
- American Journal of Health Economics : Member, Editorial Board
- International Journal of Health Care Economics and 4 Management : Member, Editorial Board
- Forum for Health Economics and Policy : Member, Board of Editors
Links
Research Grants
The Exercise of Market Power by Nonprofit Hospitals
National Bureau of Economic Research
June 1997-December 2000
Investigation of Competition under Fixed Prices
U.K. Department of Health
September 2007-August 2010
The National Impact of Information Technology Portfolio Investments on Inpatient Resource Use and Quality of Care
U.S. Agency for Health Care Research and Quality
July 2008 - June 2010
Articles
Variation In Health Spending Growth For The Privately Insured From 2007 To 2014
Health Affairs2019
We examined the growth in health spending on people with employer-sponsored private insurance in the period 2007–14. Our analysis relied on information from the Health Care Cost Institute data set, which includes insurance claims from Aetna, Humana, and UnitedHealthcare. In the study period private health spending per enrollee grew 16.9 percent, while growth in Medicare spending per fee-for-service beneficiary decreased 1.2 percent.
Do Increasing Markups Matter? Lessons from Empirical Industrial Organization
Journal of Economic Perspectives2019
This article considers the recent literature on firm markups in light of both new and classic work in the field of industrial organization. We detail the shortcomings of papers that rely on discredited approaches from the "structure-conduct-performance" literature. In contrast, papers based on production function estimation have made useful progress in measuring broad trends in markups.
The Anatomy of a Hospital System Merger: The Patient Did Not Respond Well to Treatment
National Bureau of Economic Research2021
Despite the continuing US hospital merger wave, it remains unclear how mergers change, or fail to change, hospital behavior and performance. We open the “black box” of hospital practices through a mega-merger between two for-profit chains. Benchmarking the merger’s effects against the acquirer’s stated aims, we show they achieved some of their goals, harmonizing electronic medical records and sending managers to target hospitals. Post-acquisition managerial processes were similar across the merged chain.
Optimal Contracting with Altruistic Agents: Medicare Payments for Dialysis Drugs
American Economic Review2023
We study health-care provider agency and optimal payments, considering an expensive medication for dialysis patients. Using Medicare claims data we estimate a structural model of treatment decisions, in which providers differ in their altruism and marginal costs, and this heterogeneity is unobservable to the government. In a novel application of nonlinear pricing methods, we empirically characterize the optimal contracts in this environment.
On the misuse of regressions of price on the HHI in merger review
Journal of Antitrust Enforcement2022
The article explains why regressions of price on HHI should not be used in merger review. Both price and HHI are equilibrium outcomes determined by demand, supply, and the factors that drive them. Thus, a regression of price on the HHI does not recover a causal effect that could inform the likely competitive effects of a merger. Nonetheless, economic theory is consistent with the legal presumption that a merger is likely to have adverse competitive effects if it occurs in a concentrated market and makes that market more concentrated.
