Jason Shafrin

  Contact information

     Email           jshafrin@ucsd.edu
     Phone          858.366.3867
     Office          Economics Building, Room 125 (map)
     Address      9500 Gilman Dr. #0534, La Jolla, CA 92093-0534

  Primary Research Interest             Health Economics
  Secondary Research Interests       Public Economics, Labor Economics, Applied Econometrics

Operating on commission: How physician financial incentives affect surgery rates   (Job Market Paper, revise and resubmit at Health Economics)

Physicians act as agents for their patients and are responsible for selecting medical care levels in their patients’ best interest. Financial incentives, however, may influence the medical care physicians prescribe. This paper employs a nationally representative dataset to test how the physician compensation systems affect surgery rates. I find that when specialists are paid on a fee-for-service (FFS) basis rather than via capitation, surgery rates increase by 78%. Further, physicians are found to be more responsive to financial incentives when a patient requires elective outpatient surgery rather than non-elective inpatient surgery.