Determinants of Physicians’ Decisions to Specialize

Robert Gagné () and Pierre Leger

No 03-01, Cahiers de recherche from HEC Montréal, Institut d'économie appliquée

Abstract: . In this paper, we study physician specialty decisions using several unique data sets which include information on almost all Canadian physicians who practised in Canada between 1989 and 1998. Unlike previous studies, we use a truly exogenous measure of potential income across general and specialty medicine to estimate the effect of income on physicians’ specialty choices. Furthermore, our estimation procedure allows us to purge the income-effect estimates of non-pecuniary specialty attributes which may be correlated with higher paying specialties. Understanding the effect of potential income (and other variables) on choices is necessary if the desired mix across generalists and specialists as well as across specialties is to be achieved. Our results show that physicians respond to differences in income when making their specialty decisions. More specifically, our simulation exercise suggests that provinces could increase the proportion of graduates who select a surgical specialty by increasing the fees they pay to them.

Keywords: Physician; Specialty; Choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C30 I10 I18 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29 pages
Date: 2003-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp and nep-hea
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Related works:
Journal Article: Determinants of physicians' decisions to specialize (2005)
Working Paper: Determinants of Physicians' Decisions to Specialize (2003)
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