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Economics and Finance

D-Index
34
Citations
6955
World Ranking
3053
National Ranking
1678

Overview

Robert J. Town is affiliated with The University of Texas at Austin in the United States. Their research primarily focuses on the field of Economics, Econometrics and Finance, with contributions spanning several subfields including Economics and Econometrics, General Health Professions, Marketing, and Pharmacology.

The main topics in Robert J. Town's work cover a variety of issues in healthcare and economics, including:

  • Healthcare Policy and Management
  • Global Health Care Issues
  • Primary Care and Health Outcomes
  • Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
  • Merger and Competition Analysis
  • Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare

Their recent publications include the following papers:

  • "Reducing Medicare Advantage Benchmarks Will Decrease Plan Generosity, But Those Effects Will Likely Be Modest," 2023, Health Affairs
  • "Countervailing Market Power and Hospital Competition," 2021, The Review of Economics and Statistics
  • "Replication data for: Countervailing Market Power and Hospital Competition," 2020, Harvard Dataverse
  • "Physician Practice Preferences and Healthcare Expenditures: Evidence from Commercial Payers," 2024, SSRN Electronic Journal
  • "Robert J. Town, Phd [email protected]," 2025, SSRN Electronic Journal

Most of Robert J. Town's publications have appeared in the SSRN Electronic Journal, with additional papers published in Health Affairs, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and Harvard Dataverse. This reflects a focus on both economic theory and practical healthcare policy.

The list of frequent co-authors collaborating with Robert J. Town includes:

  • Jia-Jun Wu
  • Michael E. Chernew
  • Keaton Miller
  • Amil Petrin
  • Eric Barrette

These collaborations indicate interdisciplinary connections intersecting economics, healthcare policy, and market analysis.

Best Publications

  • Competition in Health Care Markets

    Martin Gaynor;Robert Town

  • Mergers when prices are negotiated: Evidence from the hospital industry

    Gautam Gowrisankaran;Aviv Nevo;Robert Town;Robert Town

  • The Industrial Organization of Health-Care Markets

    Martin Gaynor;Kate Ho;Robert J. Town

  • National health care costs of peripheral arterial disease in the Medicare population

    Alan T Hirsch;Lacey Hartman;Robert J Town;Beth A Virnig

  • A structured review of the effect of economic incentives on consumers' preventive behavior.

    Robert L Kane;Paul E. Johnson;Robert J. Town;Mary E Butler

  • Competition, payers, and hospital quality.

    Gautam Gowrisankaran;Robert J. Town

  • Hospital competition in HMO networks

    Robert Town;Gregory Vistnes

  • Are All the Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium

    Kate Antonovics;Robert J Town

  • Bayesian Inference for Hospital Quality in a Selection Model

    John F. Geweke;Gautam Gowrisankaran;Robert J. Town

  • The impact of health information technology on hospital productivity

    Jinhyung Lee;Jeffrey S. McCullough;Robert J. Town

  • Competition in Health Care Markets

    Martin Gaynor;Robert J. Town

  • Estimating the quality of care in hospitals using instrumental variables.

    Gautam Gowrisankaran;Robert J. Town

  • Economic incentives and physicians’ delivery of preventive care: A systematic review

    Robert Town;Robert Kane;Paul Johnson;Mary Butler

  • Merger waves and the structure of merger and acquisition time‐series

    R. J. Town

  • Does information matter? Competition, quality, and the impact of nursing home report cards.

    David C. Grabowski;Robert J. Town

  • The welfare impact of Medicare HMOs.

    Robert Town;Su Liu

  • Health Information Technology and Patient Outcomes: The Role of Organizational and Informational Complementarities

    Jeffrey S. McCullough;Stephen Parente;Robert Town

  • The Effects of Race and Worker Productivity on Performance Evaluations

    Marta Elvira;Robert Town

  • Assessing the influence of incentives on physicians and medical groups.

    Robert Town;Douglas R. Wholey;John Kralewski;Bryan Dowd

  • Dynamic Equilibrium in the Hospital Industry

    Gautam Gowrisankaran;Robert J. Town

  • Health information technology and patient outcomes: the role of information and labor coordination

    Jeffrey S. McCullough;Stephen T. Parente;Robert J. Town

  • Are All The Good Men Married? Uncovering the Sources of the Marital Wage Premium - eScholarship

    Kate Antonovics;Robert Town

Frequent Co-Authors

Martin Gaynor
Martin Gaynor Carnegie Mellon University
Lawton R. Burns
Lawton R. Burns University of Pennsylvania
Aviv Nevo
Aviv Nevo University of Pennsylvania
Michael E. Chernew
Michael E. Chernew Harvard University
Mark V. Pauly
Mark V. Pauly University of Pennsylvania
Patrick Bajari
Patrick Bajari University of Washington
Carol A. Ford
Carol A. Ford Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Daniel Polsky
Daniel Polsky Johns Hopkins University
Roger Feldman
Roger Feldman University of Minnesota
David Dranove
David Dranove Northwestern University

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