Primary care physicians have two roles: the healer and the gatekeeper. We show that, due to information asymmetries, they cannot be expected to fulfill the latter role. Better gatekeepers will be poorer healers; hence all patients, both truly sick and shirkers, will strictly prefer physicians...

This paper exploits a Norwegian physician directed reform aimed to reduce sick-leave. Physicians were required to consider part-time sick-leave as the default treatment and - in the case of long lasting full-time sick-leave - to file a report documenting why the worker was unable to perform any...

This paper assesses the causal effect of sick-leaves on subsequent earnings using an administrative dataset for Norway linking individual earnings, sick-leave records and primary care physicians. The leniency of a worker's physician - certifying sickness absence - is used as instrument for...