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Agency in Health-Care: Are Medical Care-Givers Perfect Agents?

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Author Info
Einat Neuman () (Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo)
Shoshana Neuman () (Bar-Ilan University, CEPR and IZA)

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Abstract

It has been suggested in the literature that a source of incompleteness in the agency relationship between the doctor and the patient is that the provider may respond to an incomplete or biased perception of the patient’s interests. However, this has not been shown empirically. This paper is novel in presenting an empirical test of the fundamental assumption of the agency model that health care professionals understand what their patients want. Discrete Choice Experiments (DCEs) are conducted simultaneously within samples of patients (women who gave birth) and care-givers (doctors and nurses), to elicit and contrast patients’ authentic preferences (for five maternity ward attributes) with what care-givers believe them to be. Conclusion: agents have a biased perception of principals’ preferences, and therefore a complete agency relationship does not exist. Our findings add a novel empirical contribution to the agency relationship literature. Moreover, parallel preference patterns of patients and care-givers are certainly of much interest to the field of health economics: Informing the unaware medical care-givers about the patients' preferences, will improve treatment and patients' satisfaction.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 2727.

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Length: 14 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2007
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Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2727

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Related research
Keywords: principal-agent relationship; health-care; maternity wards; discrete choice experiment; preferences;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

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.:
  1. Labelle, Roberta & Stoddart, Greg & Rice, Thomas, 1994. "A re-examination of the meaning and importance of supplier-induced demand," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(3), pages 347-368, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Paul Calcott, 1999. "Demand inducement as cheap talk," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 8(8), pages 721-733.
  3. Vick, Sandra & Scott, Anthony, 1998. "Agency in health care. Examining patients' preferences for attributes of the doctor-patient relationship," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 587-605, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Gaynor, Martin, 1994. "Issues in the Industrial Organization of the Market for Physician Services," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 3(1), pages 211-55, Spring.
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  5. Mooney, Gavin & Ryan, Mandy, 1993. "Agency in health care: Getting beyond first principles," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 125-135, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Culyer, A J, 1989. "The Normative Economics of Health Care Finance and Provision," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press, vol. 5(1), pages 34-58, Spring.
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