IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/del/abcdef/98-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Moral Hazard and the Demand for Physician Services: First Lessons from a French Natural Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Chiappori, P.A.
  • Durand, F.
  • Geoffard, P.Y.

Abstract

This paper presents first empirical results on moral hazard in demand for physician services, using a longitudinal dataset on 4578 individuals followed during two years. The data set contains two subgroups, one for which a copayment rate of 10% for physician visits was introduced in 1994, and an other for which no change occured during the period of the study. This enables us to use these data as coming from a controlled natural experiment. We test if the number of visits per agent was modified by this copayment rate. The data reject the hypothesis for office visits, but do not for home visits. This suggests that there is moral hazard in demand for some physician services, but also that when non-monetary costs are important, small changes in monetary price may not induce any major change in behaviour.

Suggested Citation

  • Chiappori, P.A. & Durand, F. & Geoffard, P.Y., 1998. "Moral Hazard and the Demand for Physician Services: First Lessons from a French Natural Experiment," DELTA Working Papers 98-05, DELTA (Ecole normale supérieure).
    • Handle: RePEc:del:abcdef:98-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Richard Arnott & Joseph Stiglitz, 1993. "Price Equilibrium, Efficiency, And Decentralizability In Insurance Markets With Moral Hazard," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 254, Boston College Department of Economics.
    2. Puelz, Robert & Snow, Arthur, 1994. "Evidence on Adverse Selection: Equilibrium Signaling and Cross-Subsidization in the Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 102(2), pages 236-257, April.
    3. Manning, Willard G, et al, 1987. "Health Insurance and the Demand for Medical Care: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(3), pages 251-277, June.
    4. repec:crs:wpaper:9711 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Dionne, Georges & Gouriéroux, Christian & Vanasse, Charles, 1998. "Evidence of adverse selection in automobile insurance markets," Working Papers 98-9, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    6. Phelps, Charles E & Newhouse, Joseph P, 1974. "Coinsurance, the Price of Time, and the Demand for Medical Services," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 56(3), pages 334-342, August.
    7. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Salanie, 2000. "Testing for Asymmetric Information in Insurance Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(1), pages 56-78, February.
    8. repec:crs:wpaper:9701 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Georges Dionne & Christian Gourieroux & Charles Vanasse, 1997. "The Informational Content of Household Decisions," Working Papers 97-01, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    10. Chiappori, Pierre-Andre & Salanie, Bernard, 1997. "Empirical contract theory: The case of insurance data," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 943-950, April.
    11. Wilson, Charles, 1977. "A model of insurance markets with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 167-207, December.
    12. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    13. Laurent Caussat & Michel Glaude, 1993. "Dépenses médicales et couverture sociale," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 265(1), pages 31-43.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Pierre-André Chiappori & Bernard Salanié, 2002. "Testing Contract Theory : A Survey of Some Recent Work," Working Papers 2002-11, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    2. Dionne, G. & Doherty, N., 1991. "Adverse Selection In Insurance Markets: A Selective Survey," Cahiers de recherche 9105, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    3. Dionne, Georges, 1998. "La mesure empirique des problèmes d’information," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 74(4), pages 585-606, décembre.
    4. Dionne, Georges & Fombaron, Nathalie & Doherty, Neil, 2012. "Adverse selection in insurance contracting," Working Papers 12-8, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    5. Dionne, Georges, 2012. "The empirical measure of information problems with emphasis on insurance fraud and dynamic data," Working Papers 12-10, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    6. Hyojoung Kim & Doyoung Kim & Subin Im & James W. Hardin, 2009. "Evidence of Asymmetric Information in the Automobile Insurance Market: Dichotomous Versus Multinomial Measurement of Insurance Coverage," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 76(2), pages 343-366, June.
    7. Sebastian Panthöfer, 2016. "Risk Selection under Public Health Insurance with Opt‐Out," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(9), pages 1163-1181, September.
    8. Dahchour, Maki & Dionne, Georges, 2002. "Pricing of Automobile Insurance Under Asymmetric Information: a Study on Panel Data," Working Papers 01-6, HEC Montreal, Canada Research Chair in Risk Management.
    9. Hanming Fang & Michael P. Keane & Dan Silverman, 2008. "Sources of Advantageous Selection: Evidence from the Medigap Insurance Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(2), pages 303-350, April.
    10. John E. Murray, 2011. "Asymmetric Information and Countermeasures in Early Twentieth‐Century American Short‐Term Disability Microinsurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 78(1), pages 117-138, March.
    11. Raj Chetty & Amy Finkelstein, 2012. "Social Insurance: Connecting Theory to Data," NBER Working Papers 18433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Dionne, Georges & Michaud, Pierre-Carl & Pinquet, Jean, 2013. "A review of recent theoretical and empirical analyses of asymmetric information in road safety and automobile insurance," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 85-97.
    13. Jennifer L. Wang & Ching‐Fan Chung & Larry Y. Tzeng, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of the Effects of Increasing Deductibles on Moral Hazard," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 551-566, September.
    14. Martin Eling & Ruo Jia & Yi Yao, 2017. "Between-Group Adverse Selection: Evidence From Group Critical Illness Insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 84(2), pages 771-809, June.
    15. Xavier d'Haultfoeuille & Philippe Février, 2007. "Identification and Estimation of Incentive Problems : Adverse Selection," Working Papers 2007-21, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    16. Alma Cohen & Peter Siegelman, 2010. "Testing for Adverse Selection in Insurance Markets," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 77(1), pages 39-84, March.
    17. Andrea Attar & Thomas Mariotti & François Salanié, 2022. "Regulating Insurance Markets: Multiple Contracting And Adverse Selection," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 63(3), pages 981-1020, August.
    18. Maria del Carmen Melgar & Jose Antonio Ordaz, 2010. "The Utility Of Zero-Inflated Models In The Estimation Of The Number Of Accidents In The Automobile Insurance Industry," Equilibrium. Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy, Institute of Economic Research, vol. 5(2), pages 181-194, December.
    19. Gao, Feng & Powers, Michael R. & Wang, Jun, 2009. "Adverse selection or advantageous selection? Risk and underwriting in China's health-insurance market," Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 505-510, June.
    20. Pierre‐André Chiappori & Bruno Jullien & Bernard Salanié & François Salanié, 2006. "Asymmetric information in insurance: general testable implications," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(4), pages 783-798, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    MORAL HAZARD ; HEALTH SERVICES ; INSURANCE;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • G22 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Insurance; Insurance Companies; Actuarial Studies

    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:del:abcdef:98-05. 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: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deltafr.html .

    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.