Martin Gaynor Ph.D.

Eugene J. Barone Professor of Economics and Health Policy
H. John Heinz III College
Carnegie Mellon University
Email: mgaynor@andrew.cmu.edu Discipline: Economics Expertise: Competition / Markets

Investigator Award

Antitrust Policy and the Transformation of Health Care Markets
Award Year: 1994 This study examines antitrust policy in the context of integrated provider networks. While increasing collaboration and integration of medical providers may be consistent with the goal of reducing health care costs, antitrust laws are written to promote and protect competition, not collaboration. Drs. Haas-Wilson and Gaynor take a close look at the role of antitrust policy in ensuring pro-competitive impacts of mergers, network affiliations, joint ventures, contractual arrangements, and health insurance purchasing alliances. A conceptual framework is developed to analyze competitive effects, focusing on: 1) the social welfare impacts of changes in structure and conduct in health care markets; 2) whether changes enhance efficiency or quality, or whether they facilitate collusion and market power; and, 3) appropriate antitrust policy if these changes result in lessened competition and a significant welfare loss. The findings provide policy guidance concerning when consolidation and/or collaboration should be encouraged or prohibited.

Background

Martin Gaynor is the Eugene J. Barone Professor of Economics and Health Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. He has served as a consultant to the Federal Trade Commission, U.S. Department of Justice, and the California Department of Corporations on antitrust issues. He has given testimony before the Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Justice and the California State Senate and has participated in briefings for U.S. House of Representatives Staff. Professor Gaynor also serves on the editorial boards of the American Economic Review, Health Services Research, the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, RandForums for Health Economics and Policy, Health Economics, Policy, and Law, and edited a symposium on incentives and competition in health care markets for the Rand Journal of Economics. He is a referee for numerous professional journals, and works with the National Science Foundation, Agency for Health Care Policy Research, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Drug Abuse, Veterans Administration and National Endowment for the Humanities as an ad hoc grant reviewer. Professor Gaynor's research focuses on competition in health care markets and on the role of incentive structures within health care. This is being investigated within the context of the current rapidly changing structure of health care markets, with implications for appropriate antitrust and regulatory policy in this area. Professor Gaynor is listed among the top 1,000 economists in the world and in Who's Who in America. He received the Kenneth J. Arrow Award for best published paper in health economics worldwide in 1995. He also delivered the R. Allen Moran Memorial Lecture at Lehigh University in 1992, and received the FIRST Award (First Independent Research Support and Transition) given by the National Institute of Mental Health, 1990-1993. Professor Gaynor received his bachelor of arts degree in economics from the University of California, San Diego, in 1977, a master of arts in economics from Northwestern in 1979 and a PhD in economics from Northwestern in 1983.