Date and Time
May 10, 2006
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Amitabh Chandra, PhD - Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Harvard University

A large literature in medicine and public health documents the persistent presence of treatment disparities in healthcare for minority groups. A leading explanation for these disparities is that they are the consequence of physician prejudice. We use simple economic insights to characterize two competing views of physician behavior.

Under prejudicial behavior, physician use a higher benefit hurdle before providing care to members of minority groups; so minority members should therefore have higher returns from being treated. Under statistical-discrimination, race and gender are markers for the benefit from treatment; average returns are lower for minority members. The two models generate different testable implications that we examine using data on heart-attack treatments from the Cooperative Cardiovascular Project (CCP). Based on this data, we reject the model of prejudicial behavior.