This article examines the link between restrictions on the number of physicians and general practitioners’ (GPs) earnings. Using a representative panel of 6016 French self-employed GPs over the years 1983–2004, we estimate an earnings function to identify experience, time and cohort effects. The estimated gap in earnings between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ cohorts can be as large as 25%. GPs who began their practices during the eighties have the lowest permanent earnings: they belong to the large cohorts of the baby-boom and face the consequences of an unlimited number of places in medical schools. Conversely, the decrease in the number of places in medical schools led to an increase in permanent earnings of GPs who began their practices in the mid-nineties. A stochastic dominance analysis shows that unobserved heterogeneity does not compensate for average differences in earnings between cohorts. These findings suggest that the first years of practice are decisive for a GP. If competition between physicians is too intense at the beginning of their careers, they will suffer from permanently lower earnings. To conclude, our results show that the policies aimed at reducing the number of medical students succeeded in buying up physicians’ permanent earnings.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institut d'economie publique (IDEP), Marseille, France in its series IDEP Working Papers with number
0804.
Find related papers by JEL classification: C2 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Verbeek, Marno & Nijman, Theo, 1992.
"Testing for Selectivity Bias in Panel Data Models,"
International Economic Review,
Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 33(3), pages 681-703, August.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
McGuire, Thomas G., 2000.
"Physician agency,"
Handbook of Health Economics,
in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 9, pages 461-536
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)