Profit or Patients' Health Benefit? Exploring the Heterogeneity in Physician Altruism

Geir Godager and Daniel Wiesen ()

No 2011:7, HERO Online Working Paper Series from University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme

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 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2011-12-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Profit or patients’ health benefit? Exploring the heterogeneity in physician altruism (2013)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:oslohe:2011_007

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