from Part III - Monopsony
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 November 2022
Monopsony is the inelegant term that refers to a market in which there is a single buyer (or employer) of a well-specified good or service. Provided that the supply of inputs is positively sloped, the monopsonist may have market power. Profit maximization will lead the monopsonist to depress the price of the input by reducing its purchases, which harms input suppliers and also consumers. Although it is somewhat counterintuitive, this apparent cost saving does not result in lower output prices. In this chapter, we will show how the exercise of monopsony power has deleterious economic effects in both the input market and the output market. We also extend our discussion to dominant buyers and oligopsonists. We observe monopsony in many health insurance markets. Dominant health insurers generally represent a large share of business for health care providers. This allows an insurer to depress reimbursement rates for health care providers by adjusting the quantity of the services that it buys. Those lower reimbursement rates may lead to a reduction in the availability and quality of care for patients.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.