Testing a Roy Model with Productivity Spillovers: Evidence from the Treatment of Heart Attacks

Amitabh Chandra and Doug Staiger

No 10811, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Productivity spillovers are often cited as a reason for geographic specialization in production. A large literature in medicine documents specialization across areas in the use of surgical treatments, which is unrelated to patient outcomes. We show that a simple Roy model of patient treatment choice with productivity spillovers can generate these facts. Our model predicts that high-use areas will have higher returns to surgery, better outcomes among patients most appropriate for surgery, and worse outcomes among patients least appropriate for surgery. We find strong empirical support for these and other predictions of the model, and decisively reject alternative explanations commonly proposed to explain geographic variation in medical care.

JEL-codes: I1 J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Chandra, Amitabh and Douglas Staiger. “Productivity Spillovers in Healthcare: Evidence from the Treatment of Heart Attacks.” Journal of Political Economy (February 2007): 103-140.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10811.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:nbr:nberwo:10811

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w10811

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).