Kalb Guyonne, Kuehnle Daniel, Scott Anthony, Cheng Terence Chai, Jeon Sung-Hee
Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Institute for the Study of Labor, Bonn, Germany.
Health Econ. 2018 Feb;27(2):e101-e119. doi: 10.1002/hec.3572. Epub 2017 Oct 4.
Little is known about the response of physicians to changes in compensation: Do increases in compensation increase or decrease labour supply? In this paper, we estimate wage elasticities for physicians. We apply both a structural discrete choice approach and a reduced-form approach to examine how these different approaches affect wage elasticities at the intensive margin. Using uniquely rich data collected from a large sample of general practitioners (GPs) and specialists in Australia, we estimate 3 alternative utility specifications (quadratic, translog, and box-cox utility functions) in the structural approach, as well as a reduced-form specification, separately for men and women. Australian data is particularly suited for this analysis due to a lack of regulation of physicians' fees leading to variation in earnings. All models predict small negative wage elasticities for male and female GPs and specialists passing several sensitivity checks. For this high-income and long-working-hours population, the translog and box-cox utility functions outperform the quadratic utility function. Simulating the effects of 5% and 10% wage increases at the intensive margin slightly reduces the full-time equivalent supply of male GPs, and to a lesser extent of male specialists and female GPs.
关于医生对薪酬变化的反应，我们所知甚少：薪酬增加会增加还是减少劳动力供给？在本文中，我们估计了医生的工资弹性。我们应用了一种结构性离散选择方法和一种简化形式方法，以研究这些不同方法如何在集约边际上影响工资弹性。利用从澳大利亚大量全科医生（GP）和专科医生样本中收集的独特丰富数据，我们在结构性方法中估计了3种替代效用规范（二次效用函数、超越对数效用函数和Box-Cox效用函数），以及一种简化形式规范，分别针对男性和女性进行估计。由于对医生收费缺乏监管导致收入存在差异，澳大利亚的数据特别适合进行此分析。所有模型在通过多项敏感性检验后，预测男性和女性全科医生及专科医生的工资弹性均为小的负数。对于这个高收入且工作时间长的群体，超越对数效用函数和Box-Cox效用函数优于二次效用函数。在集约边际上模拟5%和10%的工资增长效应，会略微减少男性全科医生的全职等效供给，对男性专科医生和女性全科医生的影响程度较小。
