The Efficiency of Slacking Off: Evidence from the Emergency Department

David C. Chan, Jr.

No 21002, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Work schedules play an important role in utilizing labor in organizations. In this study of emergency department physicians in shift work, schedules induce two distortions: First, physicians "slack off" by accepting fewer patients near end of shift (EOS). Second, physicians distort patient care, incurring higher costs as they spend less time on patients accepted near EOS. Examining how these effects change with shift overlap reveals a tradeoff between the two. Within an hour after the normal time of work completion, physicians are willing to spend hospital resources eight times more than their market wage to preserve their leisure. Accounting for overall costs, I find that physicians slack off at approximately second-best optimal levels.

JEL-codes: D20 I10 L23 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
Note: EH LS PR
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21002.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:21002

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w21002

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 ().