| In 1995, the average American surgeon earned over ;Roughly half of the differences in income between generalists and specialists can be explained by differences across specialties in hours of work and length of residencies. Unobserved ability differences between physicians who choose more specialized fields and those who choose family practice or internal medicine that are present before entering medical school explain between 10% and 20% of the income differences. The remaining income differences are due either to compensating wage differentials for unobserved specialty-specific job quality attributes or to differential entry barriers across specialties. These results imply that economists searching for anti-competitive explanations for the high costs of specialty care should focus on surgeons rather than internal medicine doctors. |
