Carnegie Mellon University, National Bureau of Economic Research,

The goal of this paper is to identify key issues con-cerning the nature of competition in health care mar-kets and its impacts on quality and social welfare and to identify pertinent findings from the theoretical and empirical literature on this topic. The theoretical literature in economics on competition and quality, the theoretical literature in health economics on this topic, and the empirical findings on competition and ∗This paper was commissioned and supported by the Fed-eral Trade Commission. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the FTC or any individ-ual commissioner. Thanks are due to Ashish Arora, Nicola