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Essays On Malpractice Reform, Physician Human Capital, And Physicians' Location Choices, Siyang Li

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In response to the sharp increases in the malpractice insurance premiums in the 1970’s, almost all states in the US have passed tort reforms since then. Previous studies found that tort reforms can reduce malpractice pressure faced by physicians in terms of the size of malpractice rewards and the frequency of malpractice lawsuits. However, there is mixed evidence that state malpractice reforms affect the aggregate supply of physicians in a state. Constrained by the availability of state-level counts of physicians utilized in difference-in-difference framework, most studies were not able to further test for the existence of heterogeneous effects across physicians.