The cost of influence: How gifts to physicians shape prescriptions and drug costs

Arbeitspapier

This paper studies how gifts - monetary or in-kind payments - from drug firms to physicians in the US affect prescriptions and drug costs. We estimate heterogeneous treatment effects by combining physician-level data on antidiabetic prescriptions and payments with causal inference and machine learning methods. We find that payments cause physicians to prescribe more brand drugs, resulting in a cost increase of $30 per dollar received. Responses differ widely across physicians, and are primarily explained by variation in patients' out-of-pocket costs. A gift ban is estimated to decrease drug costs by 3-4%. Taken together, these novel findings reveal how payments shape prescription choices and drive up costs.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Working Papers in Economics and Statistics ; No. 2023-03

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Analysis of Health Care Markets ; Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health ; Marketing
• Thema: public health ; payments to physicians ; gift ban ; heterogeneous treatment effects ; causal machine learning

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Newham, Melissa ; Valente, Marica
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): University of Innsbruck, Research Platform Empirical and Experimental Economics (eeecon)
• (wo): Innsbruck
• (wann): 2023

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/278428
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:41 MEZ