How important are economic factors in choice of medical specialty?
Author InfoJames Thornton (Department of Economics, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA) Fred Esposto (Department of Economics, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, Michigan, USA) Abstract An ongoing debate exists among health care researchers about the mechanism that allocates physicians across medical specialties, and appropriate policy measures to correct imbalances that may arise from time to time. Most researchers believe that choice of residency program by medical school graduates is key to understanding how physicians are distributed across specialties, but there is much disagreement about whether economic or non-economic factors are most influential in determining this choice. We undertake an empirical investigation of two potentially important economic factors: income and leisure. To do so, we specify a two way error component regression model to estimate the effects of expected earnings and available leisure time, and uncertainty of earnings and leisure,
