Physician labor supply, financial incentives, and access to healthcare

Lionel Wilner () and Philippe Choné ()
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Lionel Wilner: CREST-ENSAE Paris
Philippe Choné: CREST-ENSAE Paris

No 2025-07, Working Papers from Center for Research in Economics and Statistics

Abstract: To empirically assess how physicians respond to financial incentives, we leverage a quasi-natural experiment in France where most GPs’ fees are regulated. In 2017, a wide-scale regulatory change caused the price of a visit to increase from e23 to e25. Relying on granular claims data covering the universe of patients, doctors, and visits, we show that physician activity grew by nearly 9% after the price increase, yielding a unitary price elasticity of healthcare provision. The number of distinct patients examined increased substantially, while the provision of medical services per patient hardly changed, resulting in a slight increase in physicians’ number of days worked. Drug prescription per patient is also shown to decrease, suggesting that the policy was cost-effective and enhanced access to healthcare, with limited adverse effects. Earlycareer physicians responded strongly to these financial incentives, while later-career physicians hardly changed their labor supply behavior.

Keywords: Physician labor supply; Financial incentives; Claims data; Access to healthcare; Medical spending. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I11 I18 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 69 pages
Date: 2025-06-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur
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