Health Economics Commons^™

Concentration And Nurse Staffing Outcomes In The Healthcare Labor Market, Lizzy Crotty

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I investigate impacts to the nursing occupation from a perspective of market concentration. I measure the concentration of healthcare employment opportunities across the U.S. with a Herfindahl-Hirshman Index, finding moderate levels of concentration that vary greatly in markets with different population sizes and different locations. I use a Weighted Least Squares model to investigate how changing market concentration is affecting nurse employment. Analysis across different regions and different levels of urbanicity finds statistically insignificant heterogeneous effects with noisy zero estimates. The results are inconclusive evidence against monopsony presence in the nursing labor market.