Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
医生迁移视角下药品处方地理差异的成因分析
What Causes Geographic Variation in Drug Prescribing? Evidence from Physician Migration
摘要
In this article, we examine the importance of individual physicians in explaining the significant variation in prescription drug spending in Medicare Part D. By tracking prescribing behavior before and after physician relocations, we find that movers' prescribing converges toward the average of their new location. However, this convergence is far from complete, highlighting the importance of idiosyncratic physician‐specific factors. Overall, these physician‐specific factors explain about 60 to 70 percent of the cross‐sectional variation in prescription drug spending, suggesting that physicians are one of the most important supply‐side determinants of this variation. We investigate several potential mechanisms behind this partial convergence.
中文摘要
本文探讨了在医疗保险D部分处方药支出显著差异中，个体医生的重要性。通过追踪医生迁移前后的处方行为，我们发现迁移者的处方模式会逐渐趋近于新地区的平均水平。然而，这种趋同远未完全实现，凸显了医生个体特有因素的关键作用。总体而言，这些医生特有因素解释了处方药支出横截面差异的60%至70%，表明医生是导致这种差异的最重要供给侧决定因素之一。我们进一步研究了这种部分趋同背后的若干潜在机制。