IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v40y2005i1p115-143.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Specialty Selection and Lifetime Returns to Specialization Within Medicine

Author

Listed:
  • Jayanta Bhattacharya

Abstract

In 1995, the average American surgeon earned over $269,000 while family practice doctors earned $131,200. Using data from the Survey of Young Physicians and the American Medical Association’s Socio-Economic Monitoring Survey, I find that only half of income differences between generalists and specialists can be explained by hours of work, residency training length, and observed and unobserved ability differences—the three competitive market explanations for differences in doctors’ incomes across specialties. The most likely explanation for the remaining income differences is differential entry barriers across specialties.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayanta Bhattacharya, 2005. "Specialty Selection and Lifetime Returns to Specialization Within Medicine," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 40(1).
    • Handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:40:y:2005:i:1:p115-143
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/XL/1/115
    Download Restriction: A subscripton is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mroz, Thomas A., 1999. "Discrete factor approximations in simultaneous equation models: Estimating the impact of a dummy endogenous variable on a continuous outcome," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 233-274, October.
    2. Roth, Alvin E, 1986. "On the Allocation of Residents to Rural Hospitals: A General Property of Two-Sided Matching Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 425-427, March.
    3. James Thornton & B. Kelly Eakin, 1997. "The Utility-Maximizing Self-Employed Physician," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 32(1), pages 98-128.
    4. Milton Friedman & Simon Kuznets, 1945. "Income from Independent Professional Practice," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie54-1, July.
    5. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-90-11 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Roth, Alvin E, 1984. "The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(6), pages 991-1016, December.
    7. Lung-Fei Lee, 1982. "Some Approaches to the Correction of Selectivity Bias," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 49(3), pages 355-372.
    8. Elliott Peranson & Alvin E. Roth, 1999. "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 748-780, September.
    9. Thomas MaCurdy & David Green & Harry Paarsch, 1990. "Assessing Empirical Approaches for Analyzing Taxes and Labor Supply," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(3), pages 415-490.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Joseph G. Altonji & Ling Zhong, 2021. "The Labor Market Returns to Advanced Degrees," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(2), pages 303-360.
    2. Di Paolo, Antonio & Tansel, Aysit, 2017. "Analyzing Wage Differentials by Fields of Study: Evidence from Turkey," GLO Discussion Paper Series 91, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. Choi, Darwin & Lou, Dong & Mukherjee, Abhiroop, 2018. "The effect of superstar firms on college major choice," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 118941, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Sivey, Peter & Scott, Anthony & Witt, Julia & Joyce, Catherine & Humphreys, John, 2012. "Junior doctors’ preferences for specialty choice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 813-823.
    5. Di Paolo, Antonio & Tansel, Aysit, 2017. "Analyzing Wage Differentials by Fields of Study: Evidence from Turkey," GLO Discussion Paper Series 91, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Alice J. Chen & Elizabeth L. Munnich & Stephen T. Parente & Michael R. Richards, 2022. "Do Physicians Warm Up to Higher Medicare Prices? Evidence from Alaska," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(2), pages 394-425, March.
    7. Beomsoo Kim, 2007. "The Impact of Malpractice Risk on the Use of Obstetrics Procedures," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(S2), pages 79-119, June.
    8. Boneva, Teodora & Golin, Marta & Rauh, Christopher, 2022. "Can perceived returns explain enrollment gaps in postgraduate education?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    9. Thomas A. Mroz & Gabriel Picone & Frank Sloan & Arseniy P. Yashkin, 2016. "Screening For A Chronic Disease: A Multiple Stage Duration Model With Partial Observability," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 57(3), pages 915-934, August.
    10. Ze Chen & Yuan Wang & Yanjun Guan & Michael Jie Guo & Rong Xu, 2023. "Long‐term effect of childhood pandemic experience on medical major choice: Evidence from the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in China," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(5), pages 1120-1147, May.
    11. Mroz, T. & Picone, G., 2011. "A Multiple State Duration Model with Endogenous Treatment," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 11/19, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    12. Joshua D. Gottlieb & Maria Polyakova & Kevin Rinz & Hugh Shiplett & Victoria Udalova, 2020. "Who Values Human Capitalists' Human Capital? Healthcare Spending and Physician Earnings," Working Papers 20-23, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    13. Alice Chen & Anthony Lo Sasso & Michael R. Richards, 2018. "Graduating into a downturn: Are physicians recession proof?," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 223-235, January.
    14. Alice Chen & Anthony T. Lo Sasso & Michael R. Richards, 2018. "Supply‐side effects from public insurance expansions: Evidence from physician labor markets," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(4), pages 690-708, April.
    15. Lin, Lee-Kai, 2022. "Effects of a global budget payment scheme on medical specialty workforces," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    16. Eric Helland & Mark H. Showalter, 2009. "The Impact of Liability on the Physician Labor Market," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 52(4), pages 635-663, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kóczy Á., László, 2009. "Központi felvételi rendszerek. Taktikázás és stabilitás [Central admission systems. Stratagems and stability]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 422-442.
    2. Hatfield, John William & Kojima, Fuhito, 2010. "Substitutes and stability for matching with contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(5), pages 1704-1723, September.
    3. Bettina Klaus & David F. Manlove & Francesca Rossi, 2014. "Matching under Preferences," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 14.07, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    4. Alvin E. Roth, 2010. "Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions," NBER Working Papers 16556, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Haeringer, Guillaume & Klijn, Flip, 2009. "Constrained school choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 1921-1947, September.
    6. Alvin Roth, 2008. "Deferred acceptance algorithms: history, theory, practice, and open questions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(3), pages 537-569, March.
    7. Biró, Péter & Gudmundsson, Jens, 2021. "Complexity of finding Pareto-efficient allocations of highest welfare," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(2), pages 614-628.
    8. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    9. Ágoston, Kolos Csaba & Biró, Péter & Szántó, Richárd, 2018. "Stable project allocation under distributional constraints," Operations Research Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 5(C), pages 59-68.
    10. Alvin E. Roth, 2023. "Market Design and Maintenance," NBER Chapters, in: New Directions in Market Design, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Jay Sethuraman & Chung-Piaw Teo & Liwen Qian, 2006. "Many-to-One Stable Matching: Geometry and Fairness," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 581-596, August.
    12. Newton, Jonathan & Sawa, Ryoji, 2015. "A one-shot deviation principle for stability in matching problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 1-27.
    13. Muhammad Maaz & Anastasios Papanastasiou, 2020. "Matching with Compatibility Constraints: The Case of the Canadian Medical Residency Match," Department of Economics Working Papers 2020-15, McMaster University.
    14. International Monetary Fund, 2004. "The Internal Job Market of the IMF's Economist Program," IMF Working Papers 2004/190, International Monetary Fund.
    15. Kóczy Á., László, 2010. "A magyarországi felvételi rendszerek sajátosságai [Specific features of Hungarys system of school and university admissions]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(2), pages 142-164.
    16. Jagadeesan, Ravi, 2018. "Lone wolves in infinite, discrete matching markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 275-286.
    17. Enrico Maria Fenoaltea & Izat B. Baybusinov & Jianyang Zhao & Lei Zhou & Yi-Cheng Zhang, 2021. "The Stable Marriage Problem: an Interdisciplinary Review from the Physicist's Perspective," Papers 2103.11458, arXiv.org.
    18. Mustafa Afacan, 2014. "Fictitious students creation incentives in school choice problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 493-514, August.
    19. Muhammad Maaz & Anastasios Papanastasiou, 2020. "Matching with compatibility constraints: The case of the Canadian medical residency match," The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design, University of York, vol. 5(1), pages 99-117, December.
    20. Jagadeesan, Ravi & Kominers, Scott Duke & Rheingans-Yoo, Ross, 2018. "Strategy-proofness of worker-optimal matching with continuously transferable utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 287-294.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uwp:jhriss:v:40:y:2005:i:1:p115-143. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://jhr.uwpress.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.