Gender Homophily in Referral Networks: Consequences for the Medicare Physician Earnings Gap

Dan Zeltzer

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2020, vol. 12, issue 2, 169-97

Abstract: I assess the extent to which the gender gap in physician earnings may be driven by physicians' preference for referring to specialists of the same gender. Analyzing administrative data on 100 million Medicare patient referrals, I provide robust evidence that doctors refer more to specialists of their own gender. I show that biased referrals are predominantly driven by physicians' decisions rather than by endogenous sorting of physicians or patients. Because most referring doctors are male, the net impact of same-gender bias by both male and female doctors generates lower demand for female relative to male specialists, pointing to a positive externality for increased female participation in medicine.

JEL-codes: H51 I11 J16 J31 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20180201 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20180201.data (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20180201.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20180201.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender Homophily in Referral Networks: Consequences for the Medicare Physician Earnings Gap (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:169-97

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/app.20180201

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().