Junior doctors' preferences for specialty choice

Peter Sivey; Anthony Scott; Julia Witt; Catherine Joyce; John Humphreys

doi:10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.07.001

Junior doctors' preferences for specialty choice

Peter Sivey^*, Anthony Scott, Julia Witt, Catherine Joyce, John Humphreys

^*Corresponding author for this work

Centre for Health Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

A number of studies suggest that there is an over-supply of specialists and an under-supply of general practitioners in many developed countries. Previous econometric studies of specialty choice from the US suggest that although income plays a role, other non-pecuniary factors may be important. This paper presents a novel application of a choice experiment to identify the effects of expected future earnings and other attributes on specialty choice. We find the implied marginal wage estimated from our discrete choice model is close to the actual wages of senior specialists, but much higher than those of senior GPs. In a policy simulation we find that increasing GPs' earnings by $50,000, or increasing opportunities for procedural or academic work can increase the number of junior doctors choosing general practice by between 8 and 13 percentage points. The simulation implies an earnings elasticity of specialty choice of 0.95.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	813-823
Number of pages	11
Journal	Journal of Health Economics
Volume	31
Issue number	6
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.07.001
Publication status	Published - 1 Dec 2012

Keywords

Discrete choice experiment
Junior doctors
Specialty choice

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10.1016/j.jhealeco.2012.07.001

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Junior doctors' preferences for specialty choice

Abstract

Keywords

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