 Identifying the effects of scientific information and recommendations on physicians’ prescribing behaviorPierre Dubois and Tuba Tunçel Journal of Health Economics, 2021, vol. 78, issue C Abstract: We investigate how the prescribing behavior of physicians reacts to scientific information and recommendations released by public authorities. Taking the example of antidepressant drugs, we use French panel data on exhaustive prescriptions made by a representative sample of general practitioners to more than 110,000 depressed patients between 2000 and 2008. New results revealing an increase in suicidal thinking among children taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) were reported in 2004 and prompted the release of new guidelines by public health authorities. We identify the effect of this unexpected warning on physicians’ drug choices while addressing the possibility that patients heterogeneity may be correlated with unobserved physician characteristics. While the warning decreased the average probability of prescribing SSRIs, we find that physicians’ responses to the warning were very heterogeneous and larger if the physician had a higher preference for prescribing SSRIs before the warning. Keywords: Physician behavior; Prescription; Antidepressants; Mixed logit (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jhecon:v:78:y:2021:i:c:s0167629621000461 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2021.102461 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire More articles in Journal of Health Economics from Elsevier |
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