Many countries use financial incentive programs to attract physicians to work in rural areas. This paper examines the effectiveness of a policy reform in Australia that made some locations newly eligible for financial incentives and increased incentives for locations already eligible. The...

Prices for consultations with General Practitioners (GPs) in Australia are unregulated, and patients pay the difference between the price set by the GP and a fixed reimbursement from the national tax-funded Medicare insurance scheme. We construct a Vickrey-Salop model of GP price and quality...

We quantify competition in Australia's residential aged care sector and study how competition is associated with quality of care and prices in the sector. Competition is defined three ways: the number of competitors within a 10 km radius of a facility; the distance (in km) to the third closest...

In recent years, with the aim of containing cost pressure and improving efficiency, many countries have begun to introduce market mechanisms into the aged care sector. Under the right conditions, competition can spur providers to compete by cutting costs, offering better prices and higher...

Objective This study examines whether greater private-sector participation in aged care can lead to better outcomes by comparing quality of care and prices of residential aged care facilities across three ownership types: government-owned, private not-for-profit and for profit facilities....

Using data from a new longitudinal survey of doctors from Australia, the authors test whether observed large gender-pay gaps among general practitioners (GPs) are the result of women's larger willingness to interrupt their careers. On average, female GPs earn A$83,000 or 54% less than male GPs....

A key policy issue in many countries is the maldistribution of doctors across geographic areas, which has important effects on equity of access and health care costs. Many government programs and incentive schemes have been established to encourage doctors to practise in rural areas. However,...

Many countries face a continuing shortage in nurses' labour supply. Previous research suggests that nurses respond only weakly to changes in wages. However, the decision to exit or enter the nursing profession has not been taken into account in previous studies, although the occupational choice...

Non-pecuniary sources of motivation are a strong feature of the health care sector and the impact of competitive incentives may be lower where pecuniary motivation is low. We test this hypothesis by measuring the marginal utility of income of physicians from a stated-choice experiment, and...

In the discrete choice experiment literature, it has been argued that the choice sets from which respondents choose should include an unforced choice because this is more realistic and accounts for status quo bias. However, we propose a much stronger set of arguments for preferring to use...