IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/12528.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Female Physicians Capture Their Scarcity Value? The Case of OB/GYNs

Author

Listed:
  • Jessica Wolpaw Reyes

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the imperfectly competitive market for Obstetricians and Gynecologists clears in the face of an excess demand for female OB/GYNs. This excess demand results from the convergence of three factors: i) all OB/GYN patients are women, ii) many women prefer to be treated by a female OB/GYN, iii) only a small portion of OB/GYNs are female. The paper finds that both money and non-money prices adjust: female OB/GYNs charge higher fees and also have longer waiting times. Furthermore, these effects are mediated by institutional structure: in contract settings in which money prices are rigid (i.e. managed care), waiting times are more likely to adjust, and in settings in which money prices are more flexible, the reverse occurs. In the end, female OB/GYNs are able to capture some of the value of the preferred service they provide but do not entirely close the gender income gap.

Suggested Citation

  • Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, 2006. "Do Female Physicians Capture Their Scarcity Value? The Case of OB/GYNs," NBER Working Papers 12528, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:12528
    Note: EH LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w12528.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Barbezat, Debra A & Hughes, James W, 1990. "Sex Discrimination in Labor Markets: The Role of Statistical Evidence: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 277-286, March.
    2. Oaxaca, Ronald, 1973. "Male-Female Wage Differentials in Urban Labor Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 14(3), pages 693-709, October.
    3. Gaynor, Martin, 1994. "Issues in the Industrial Organization of the Market for Physician Services," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(1), pages 211-255, Spring.
    4. Nichols, D & Smolensky, E & Tideman, T N, 1971. "Discrimination by Waiting Time in Merit Goods," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(3), pages 312-323, June.
    5. David M. Cutler & Edward L. Glaeser & Jacob L. Vigdor, 1999. "The Rise and Decline of the American Ghetto," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(3), pages 455-506, June.
    6. Kathryn M. Langwell, 1982. "Factors Affecting the Incomes of Men and Women Physicians: Further Explorations," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 17(2), pages 261-275.
    7. Barbara H. Kehrer, 1976. "Factors Affecting the Incomes of Men and Women Physicians: An Exploratory," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 11(4), pages 526-545.
    8. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1973. "Approaches to the Economics of Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 63(2), pages 287-295, May.
    9. Ohsfeldt, Robert L. & Culler, Steven D., 1986. "Differences in income between male and female physicians," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 335-346, December.
    10. Mary B. Hampton & John S. Heywood, 1993. "Do Workers Accurately Perceive Gender Wage Discrimination?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 47(1), pages 36-49, October.
    11. 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.
    12. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, April.
    13. Kuhn, Peter J, 1987. "Sex Discrimination in Labor Markets: The Role of Statistical Evidenc e," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 567-583, September.
    14. Kathryn M. Langwell, 1980. "Real Returns to Career Decisions: The Physician's Specialty and Location Choices," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 15(2), pages 278-286.
    15. Even, William E, 1990. "Sex Discrimination in Labor Markets: The Role of Statistical Evidence: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 287-289, March.
    16. West, Candace, 1993. "Reconceptualizing gender in physician-patient relationships," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 57-66, January.
    17. Dranove, David & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 2000. "The industrial organization of health care markets," Handbook of Health Economics, in: A. J. Culyer & J. P. Newhouse (ed.), Handbook of Health Economics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 20, pages 1093-1139, Elsevier.
    18. H. E. Frech III & William C. Lee, 1987. "The Welfare Cost of Rationing-By-Queuing Across Markets: Theory and Estimates from the U. S. Gasoline Crises," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(1), pages 97-108.
    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. Marianne Bertrand & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2009. "Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Corporate and Financial Sectors," NBER Working Papers 14681, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Hugh Gravelle & Anthony Scott & Peter Sivey & Jongsay Yong, 2016. "Competition, prices and quality in the market for physician consultations," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 64(1), pages 135-169, March.
    3. Gravelle, Hugh & Hole, Arne Risa & Santos, Rita, 2011. "Measuring and testing for gender discrimination in physician pay: English family doctors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 660-674, July.
    4. Dan Zeltzer, 2020. "Gender Homophily in Referral Networks: Consequences for the Medicare Physician Earnings Gap," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 169-197, April.
    5. Marianne Bertrand & Claudia Goldin & Lawrence F. Katz, 2010. "Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 228-255, July.
    6. Francisco Parro, 2012. "International Evidence on the Gender Gap in Education over the Past Six Decades: A Puzzle and an Answer to It," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 6(2), pages 150-185.

    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. Rizzo, John A. & Zeckhauser, Richard J., 2007. "Pushing incomes to reference points: Why do male doctors earn more?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 514-536, July.
    2. Jonathan B. Berk, 1999. "Statistical Discrimination in a Competitive Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 6871, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Heather Antecol & Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Eric Helland, 2014. "Bias in the Legal Profession: Self-Assessed versus Statistical Measures of Discrimination," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 43(2), pages 323-357.
    4. Nicholas Biddle & Monica Howlett & Boyd Hunter & Yin Paradies, 2013. "Labour market and other discrimination facing Indigenous Australians," Australian Journal of Labour Economics (AJLE), Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School, vol. 16(1), pages 91-113.
    5. Paul, Maureen, 2006. "A cross-section analysis of the fairness-of-pay perception of UK employees," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 243-267, April.
    6. Alan Duncan & Astghik Mavisakalyan & Yashar Tarverdi, 2016. "Self-assessed versus statistical evidence of labour market discrimination: The case of indigenous Australians," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-70, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Alan Duncan & Astghik Mavisakalyan & Yashar Tarverdi, 2016. "Self-assessed versus statistical evidence of labour market discrimination: The case of indigenous Australians," WIDER Working Paper Series 070, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    8. Engelbert Theurl & Hannes Winner, 2011. "The male–female gap in physician earnings: evidence from a public health insurance system," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(10), pages 1184-1200, October.
    9. Alan Duncan & Astghik Mavisakalyan & Yashar Taverdi, 2016. "Self-assessed versus statistical evidence of labour market discrimination," Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Working Paper series WP1602, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC), Curtin Business School.
    10. Scott Adams & John Heywood & Laurie Miller, 2014. "Caregivers, firm policies and gender discrimination claims," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 359-377, June.
    11. Stefanie Schurer & Daniel Kuehnle & Anthony Scott & Terence C. Cheng, 2016. "A Man's Blessing or a Woman's Curse? The Family Earnings Gap of Doctors," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(3), pages 385-414, July.
    12. Angel López-Nicolás & Jaume García & Pedro J. Hernández, 2001. "How wide is the gap? An investigation of gender wage differences using quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 26(1), pages 149-167.
    13. Huasheng Gao & Yaheng Lin & Yujing Ma, 2016. "Sex Discrimination and Female Top Managers: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 138(4), pages 683-702, November.
    14. Jurgen Faik & Uwe Fachinger, 2013. "The decomposition of well-being categories: An application to Germany," Working Papers 307, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    15. Antecol, Heather & Cobb-Clark, Deborah A., 2008. "Identity and racial harassment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 66(3-4), pages 529-557, June.
    16. H Gravelle & A Risa Hole, 2008. "Measuring and testing for gender discrimination in professions: the case of English family doctors," Discussion Papers 08/27, Department of Economics, University of York.
    17. Gravelle, Hugh & Hole, Arne Risa & Santos, Rita, 2011. "Measuring and testing for gender discrimination in physician pay: English family doctors," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 660-674, July.
    18. Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche, 2015. "Crossing Boundaries, Displacing Previous Knowledge and Claiming Superiority: Is the Economics of Discrimination a Conquest of Economics Imperialism?," STOREPapers 5_2015, Associazione Italiana per la Storia dell'Economia Politica - StorEP.
    19. Robst, John & VanGilder, Jennifer & Polachek, Solomon, 2003. "Perceptions of female faculty treatment in higher education: which institutions treat women more fairly?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 59-67, February.
    20. Kevin F. Hallock & Wallace Hendricks & Emer Broadbent, 1998. "Discrimination by Gender and Disability Status: Do Worker Perceptions Match Statistical Measures?," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(2), pages 245-263, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I1 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J44 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Professional Labor Markets and Occupations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:12528. 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.