HERO On line Working Paper Series
No 2011:7:
Profit or Patients' Health Benefit? Exploring the Heterogeneity in Physician Altruism
Geir Godager ()
and Daniel Wiesen ()
Abstract: This paper investigates physician altruism toward
patients’ health benefit using behavioral data from the fully incentivized
laboratory experiment of Hennig-Schmidt et al. (2011). This setup
identifies both physicians’ profits and patients’ health benefit resulting
from medical treatment decisions.
We estimate a random utility
model applying multinomial logit regression, finding that physicians attach
a positive weight on patients’ health benefit. Furthermore, physicians vary
substantially in their degree of altruism. Finally, we provide some
implications for the design of physician payment schemes.
Keywords: Payment incentives; Physician altruism; Health Care Quantity; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: C91; I11; (follow links to similar papers)
18 pages, December 28, 2011
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