Allocating Liability among Several Physicians: A Theoretical Model

Dylan Martin-Lapoirie

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Healthcare treatment can be considered a credence good; that is, the patient may not always be able to infer quality ex ante nor observe it ex post. In this article, we study the allocation of liability among two physicians for joint damage under two liability regimes: strict liability and the negligence rule. The credence characteristic implies that the patient imperfectly detects treatment error. We find that the negligence rule is more deterrent than strict liability if the probability of detection of treatment error by the patient is high. If the probability of detection is low, both liability regimes are equivalent. An efficient allocation rule should be based on the degree of substitutability between the precaution levels of the physicians and the probability that the patient detects treatment error.

Keywords: Liability; Medical malpractice; Multiple injurers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Review of Law and Economics, 2022, ⟨10.1515/rle-2021-0079⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
Journal Article: Allocating Liability among Several Physicians: A Theoretical Model (2022)
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:hal:journl:hal-03902452

DOI: 10.1515/rle-2021-0079

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().