Although physicians are often expected to be gatekeepers to health insurance benefits such as paid sick leave, research indicates a substantial reluctance to reject patient requests for sickness certificates. We show that private information on the patient's part creates a conflict between the...

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...

We investigate the effect of reputational motivation on output in a scenario of overprovision of medical treatment. We assume that physicians differ in their degree of altruism, enjoy being perceived as good but dislike being perceived as greedy. We show that better reputational motivation...

Professional norms are supposed to have a central role in the allocation of resources when consumers have inferior information about the characteristics of products. We argue that economic motives are nevertheless important to resource allocation when professional opinions differ. The argument...

We analyze prescription behavior of physicians in the public and private sector. We study two major diseases for which an effective, widely accepted low-cost treatment and alternative, more expensive treatments are available. We find that private sector physicians are more likely to prescribe...

We analyze prescription behavior of physicians in the public and private sector. We study two major diseases for which an effective, widely accepted low-cost treatment and alternative, more expensive treatments are available. We find that private sector physicians are more likely to prescribe...

We study whether and how physicians respond to financial incentives, making use of detailed register data on the health-care services provided to patients by general practitioners (GPs) in Norway over a six-year period (2006-11). To identify GPs' treatment responses, we exploit that...

This chapter reviews the literature devoted to studying markets for health care services and health insurance. There has been tremendous growth and progress in this field. A tremendous amount of new research has been done since the publication of the first volume of this Handbook. In addition,...