Does the agglomeration effect occur in the hospital sector? The impact of agglomeration economies on the financial performance of hospitals-An evidence from Poland.

The main aim of the article is to analyze the occurrence of agglomeration effect in the hospital sector on the basis of financial performance. The considerations are made on the example of hospitals in Poland-the country that survived the latest economic crisis relatively well, usually generating positive values of GDP, but where still there is an ongoing discussion on the final shape of healthcare financing model. The article is based on the assumption that there occur significant differences in financial performance between hospitals according to their location. The research hypothesis is as follows: Hospitals operating in big cities are featured by better financial condition than their counterparts operating in smaller towns. To verify the hypothesis, the methods of financial analysis and statistical hypothesis testing are used. As it is emphasized in the article, the assumption is true and the hypothesis can be verified positively.

The eldercare landscape: Evidence from California.

Although the literature suggests that nursing home location is instrumental to the efficient functioning of the long-term care industry, there has been little research directly focused on the spatial distribution of nursing homes. We discuss factors that may influence nursing home location choice, emphasizing agglomeration economies around hospitals. We estimate econometric models of location using information on all freestanding, MediCal-licensed long-term care facilities in the state of California. We find that nursing homes are more likely to locate in the same Census tract as a hospital and are more likely to locate in tracts nearer to those containing a hospital.

A spatial-temporal study of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by type: exploring localization economies implications in urban areas in Ontario.

OBJECTIVES: This study adds to the geography of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) literature by comparing the spatial-temporal patterns of five types of CAM within 19 cities in light of clustering benefits from localization economies. METHODS: CAM office location points and nearest neighbour, standard distance, local spatial autocorrelation, and Mann-Whitney analyses are utilized to test potential clustering tendencies of CAM types over time. RESULTS: It is shown that 'within' (chiropractors near chiropractors, for example) and 'amongst' (chiropractors proximate to other CAM types) spatial clustering occurs in 2007 and 2017. This implies the persistent influence of localization economies. CONCLUSIONS: Continued clustering of CAM within urban locations already replete with CAM offices will widen spatial disparities through time. This has implications for policy-makers concerned with dispersing medical resources over space for better accessibility.

Evidence for localization and urbanization economies in urban scaling.

We study the scaling of (i) numbers of workers and aggregate incomes by occupational categories against city size, and (ii) total incomes against numbers of workers in different occupations, across the functional metropolitan areas of Australia and the USA. The number of workers and aggregate incomes in specific high-income knowledge economy-related occupations and industries show increasing returns to scale by city size, showing that localization economies within particular industries account for superlinear effects. However, when total urban area incomes and/or gross domestic products are regressed using a generalized Cobb-Douglas function against the number of workers in different occupations as labour inputs, constant returns to scale in productivity against city size are observed. This implies that the urbanization economies at the whole city level show linear scaling or constant returns to scale. Furthermore, industrial and occupational organizations, not population size, largely explain the observed productivity variable. The results show that some very specific industries and occupations contribute to the observed overall superlinearity. The findings suggest that it is not just size but also that it is the diversity of specific intra-city organization of economic and social activity and physical infrastructure that should be used to understand urban scaling behaviours.