Economics of Healthcare Provider Altruism

Matteo Galizzi, Geir Godager, Jing Li, Ismo Linnosmaa, Timo Tammi and Daniel Wiesen
Additional contact information
Jing Li: School of Pharmacy, University of Washington, USA
Ismo Linnosmaa: Department of Health and Social Management, University of Eastern Finland and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), Finland
Timo Tammi: Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland
Daniel Wiesen: Department of Healthcare Management, and Center for Social and Economic Behavior (C-SEB), University of Cologne, Germany

No 2023:4, HERO Online Working Paper Series from University of Oslo, Health Economics Research Programme

Abstract: We propose a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical notions and empirical findings on altruism among physicians and other healthcare providers. While altruism in the behavioral and experimental economics literature is typically defined as a deviation from purely self-interested behavior, the theoretical health economics literature embeds the notion of physician altruism within the doctor–patient relationship. The altruism of physicians is typically defined as the weight in the doctor’s utility function attached to patient’s health benefits, besides the self-interested monetary considerations. We broadly group the empirical evidence into three main categories of evidence: evidence from (i) survey and interview data, (ii) prescriptions records, and (iii) behavioral experiments. Across each of those groups of studies and different methods, the evidence generally supports the theoretical notion that physicians behave ‘altruistically’ in their healthcare decisions. Some studies indicate, however, considerable heterogeneity in physicians’ altruistic preferences.

Keywords: Altruism; healthcare providers; experimental evidence; structural estimation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 I10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2023-06-23
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-upt
Note: This article is a revised version of the working paper “Provider altruism in health economics”, which appeared in the discussion paper series of the National Institute for Health and Welfare (No. 04/2015). We thank Helena Reisgies for her excellent research assistance
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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