Professional norms and physician behavior: homo oeconomicus or homo hippocraticus?

Iris Kesternich, Heiner Schumacher and Joachim Winter ()

Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems from Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich

Abstract: Physicians' treatment decisions determine the level of health care spending to a large extent. The analysis of physician agency describes how doctors trade off their own and their patients' benefits, with a third party (such as the collective of insured individuals or the taxpayers) bearing the costs. Professional norms are viewed as restraining physicians' self-interest and as introducing altruism towards the patient. We present a controlled experiment that analyzes the impact of professional norms on prospective physicians' trade-offs between her own profits, the patients' benefits, and the payers' expenses for medical care. We find that professional norms derived from the Hippocratic tradition shift weight to the patient in the physician's decisions while decreasing his self-interest and efficiency concerns.

Keywords: social preferences; allocation of medical resources; professional norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C72 C91 I19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-03-13
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 (7)

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Journal Article: Professional norms and physician behavior: Homo oeconomicus or homo hippocraticus? (2015)
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