摘要：Contradicting the main goals of the Hill-Burton program initiated in the 1940s, many hospitals have since closed in rural communities, mainly during the last two decades. This paper analyzes the economic impact of such hospital closures on rural communities in Geor-gia, Tennessee, and Texas in the period 1998-2000 by using a quasi-experimental control group method. The essence of this method is the careful identification of a control group -- a set of places whose economic development enables measurement of what would have happened in the place under study without the phenomenon or policy being studied. The results indicate that the rural counties that suffered hospital closures did not appear to be affected in economic terms relative to those that did not suffer such a closure.
