IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16888.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates

Author

Listed:
  • Shamena Anwar
  • Hanming Fang

Abstract

We propose and empirically implement a test for the presence of racial prejudice among emergency department (ED) physicians based on the bounceback rates of the patients who were discharged after receiving diagnostic tests during their initial ED visits. A bounceback is defined as a return to the ED within 72 hours of being initially discharged. Based on a plausible model of physician behavior, we show that differential bounceback rates across patients of different racial groups who are discharged after receiving diagnostic tests from their ED visits are informative of the racial prejudice of the physicians. Applying the test to administrative data of ED visits from California and New Jersey, we do not find evidence of prejudice against black and Hispanic patients. Our finding suggests that, at least in the emergency department setting, taste based discrimination does not play an important role in the racial disparities in health care.

Suggested Citation

  • Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2011. "Testing for the Role of Prejudice in Emergency Departments Using Bounceback Rates," NBER Working Papers 16888, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16888
    Note: EH LE LS PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16888.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph Price & Justin Wolfers, 2010. "Racial Discrimination Among NBA Referees," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(4), pages 1859-1887.
    2. Sahuguet, Nicolas & Mechoulan, Stéphane, 2011. "Assessing Racial Discrimination in Parole Release," CEPR Discussion Papers 8506, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Cecilia Rouse & Claudia Goldin, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 715-741, September.
    4. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    5. Balsa, Ana I. & McGuire, Thomas G., 2001. "Statistical discrimination in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 881-907, November.
    6. Amitabh Chandra & Douglas O. Staiger, 2010. "Identifying Provider Prejudice in Healthcare," NBER Working Papers 16382, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Shamena Anwar & Hanming Fang, 2006. "An Alternative Test of Racial Prejudice in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 127-151, March.
    8. John Knowles & Nicola Persico & Petra Todd, 2001. "Racial Bias in Motor Vehicle Searches: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(1), pages 203-232, February.
    9. Phelps, Charles E., 2000. "Information diffusion and best practice adoption," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 223-264, Elsevier.
    10. Stephen L. Ross & John Yinger, 2002. "The Color of Credit: Mortgage Discrimination, Research Methodology, and Fair-Lending Enforcement," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262182289, April.
    11. A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), 2000. "Handbook of Health Economics," Handbook of Health Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    12. Kate Antonovics & Brian G. Knight, 2009. "A New Look at Racial Profiling: Evidence from the Boston Police Department," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 163-177, February.
    13. Simeonova, Emilia, 2013. "Doctors, patients and the racial mortality gap," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 895-908.
    14. Coate, Stephen & Loury, Glenn C, 1993. "Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1220-1240, December.
    15. Grogger, Jeffrey & Ridgeway, Greg, 2006. "Testing for Racial Profiling in Traffic Stops From Behind a Veil of Darkness," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 101, pages 878-887, September.
    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. David Arnold & Will Dobbie & Crystal S Yang, 2018. "Racial Bias in Bail Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1885-1932.
    2. Bhattacharya, Debopam, 2013. "Evaluating treatment protocols using data combination," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 173(2), pages 160-174.
    3. Debopam Bhattacharya & Shin Kanaya & Margaret Stevens, 2017. "Are University Admissions Academically Fair?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 449-464, July.
    4. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Keith Joiner & Pierre Thomas Léger, 2023. "Physician Practice Style and Healthcare Costs: Evidence from Emergency Departments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3202-3219, June.
    5. Lawrence, Edward R. & Raithatha, Mehul, 2023. "Gender bias, board diversity, and firm value: Evidence from a natural experiment," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    6. Sahuguet, Nicolas & Mechoulan, Stéphane, 2011. "Assessing Racial Discrimination in Parole Release," CEPR Discussion Papers 8506, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Ilić, Dragan, 2018. "Prejudice in naturalization decisions: Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 1-18.

    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. J. Aislinn Bohren & Alex Imas & Michael Rosenberg, 2019. "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3395-3436, October.
    2. Kevin Lang & Ariella Kahn-Lang Spitzer, 2020. "Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 34(2), pages 68-89, Spring.
    3. Ilić, Dragan, 2018. "Prejudice in naturalization decisions: Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 1-18.
    4. Mujcic, Redzo & Frijters, Paul, 2013. "Still Not Allowed on the Bus: It Matters If You're Black or White!," IZA Discussion Papers 7300, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Felipe Goncalves & Steven Mello, 2021. "A Few Bad Apples? Racial Bias in Policing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(5), pages 1406-1441, May.
    6. Brady P. Horn & Jill J. Mccluskey & Ron C. Mittelhammer, 2014. "Quantifying Bias In Driving-Under-The-Influence Enforcement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 52(1), pages 269-284, January.
    7. Anwar, Shamena, 2012. "Testing for discrimination: Evidence from the game show Street Smarts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 268-285.
    8. Georgios Georgiou, 2017. "Are oral examinations objective? Evidence from the hiring process for judges in Greece," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 44(2), pages 217-239, October.
    9. Debopam Bhattacharya & Shin Kanaya & Margaret Stevens, 2017. "Are University Admissions Academically Fair?," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 449-464, July.
    10. Mark Hoekstra & CarlyWill Sloan, 2022. "Does Race Matter for Police Use of Force? Evidence from 911 Calls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(3), pages 827-860, March.
    11. Brian Rubineau & Yoon Kang, 2012. "Bias in White: A Longitudinal Natural Experiment Measuring Changes in Discrimination," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 660-677, April.
    12. Ritter, Joseph A., 2017. "How do police use race in traffic stops and searches? Tests based on observability of race," Miscellaneous Publications 253354, University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics.
    13. Anbarci, Nejat & Lee, Jungmin, 2014. "Detecting racial bias in speed discounting: Evidence from speeding tickets in Boston," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 11-24.
    14. Xiao Lin & Mark J. Browne & Annette Hofmann, 2022. "Race discrimination in the adjudication of claims: Evidence from earthquake insurance," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 89(3), pages 553-580, September.
    15. Dragan Ilić, 2013. "Marginally discriminated: the role of outcome tests in European jurisdiction," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 271-294, October.
    16. Nicolás Grau & Damián Vergara, "undated". "A Simple Test for Prejudice in Decision Processes: The Prediction-Based Outcome Test," Working Papers wp493, University of Chile, Department of Economics.
    17. Daskalova, Vessela, 2018. "Discrimination, social identity, and coordination: An experiment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 238-252.
    18. Ritter, Joseph A., 2017. "How do police use race in traffic stops and searches? Tests based on observability of race," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 82-98.
    19. David Bjerk, 2007. "Racial Profiling, Statistical Discrimination, and the Effect of a Colorblind Policy on the Crime Rate," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(3), pages 521-545, June.
    20. Daniel Martin & Philip Marx, 2022. "A Robust Test of Prejudice for Discrimination Experiments," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(6), pages 4527-4536, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I11 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Analysis of Health Care Markets
    • J7 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination

    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:nbr:nberwo:16888. 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/nberrus.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.