"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We ask how patient knowledge of appropriate antibiotic usage affects both physicians prescribing behavior and the physician-patient...

We ask how patient knowledge of appropriate antibiotic usage affects both physicians prescribing behavior and the physician-patient relationship. We conduct an audit study in which a pair of simulated patients with identical flu-like complaints visits the same physician. Simulated patient A is...

The overuse of medical services including antibiotics is often blamed on Physician Induced Demand. But since this theory is about physician motivations, it is difficult to test. We conduct an audit study in which physician financial incentives, beliefs about what patients want, and desires to...

Expert performance is often evaluated in a one dimensional way by assuming that good experts have good outcomes. We examine the example of expertise in medicine and develop a model that allows for two dimensions of physician performance: Procedural decision making and skill performing...

Treatment for depression is complex, requiring decisions that may involve tradeoffs between exploiting treatments with the highest expected value or experimenting with treatments with higher possible payoffs. Using patient claims data, we show that among skilled doctors, using a broader...