Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Essays On Health Insurer And Provider Interactions, Daniel Montanera

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis consists of three chapters on insurer and provider interactions. Despite widespread reports of defensive medicine in surveys of physicians, empirical investigations have produced conflicting evidence that defensive medicine is practiced on a significant scale. Findings imply that the relationships between malpractice pressure and health care spending and quality are non-monotonic. These predictions provide an explanation for the apparent conflicts and inconsistencies in the existing empirical literature, as well as policy guidance for future empirical investigations in separating observations and populations in different equilibrium types.

The next chapter expands the model by making physicians mobile, and includes a location …