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A theoretical model of physician's behavior with informal payments and ethical concern; the case of Greece

Lampropoulou, Panagiota LU (2013) NEKN01 20132
Department of Economics
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the phenomenon of informal payments in Greece and introduce a theoretical model for the physicians’ behavior while including ethical concern in the physicians’ utility maximization problem. The inspiration model of this essay comes from the empirical paper of Thompson and Xavier (2002), which introduces informal payments in physicians’ behavior. According to that paper, a physician chooses an informal payment in order to solve his utility maximization problem. Aiming to the solution of the maximization problem, a physician needs to make a choice of the price of the informal payment so as to equalize his marginal revenue with marginal cost, hence acting as a monopolist. From his choice it is possible... (More)
The purpose of this essay is to analyze the phenomenon of informal payments in Greece and introduce a theoretical model for the physicians’ behavior while including ethical concern in the physicians’ utility maximization problem. The inspiration model of this essay comes from the empirical paper of Thompson and Xavier (2002), which introduces informal payments in physicians’ behavior. According to that paper, a physician chooses an informal payment in order to solve his utility maximization problem. Aiming to the solution of the maximization problem, a physician needs to make a choice of the price of the informal payment so as to equalize his marginal revenue with marginal cost, hence acting as a monopolist. From his choice it is possible to derive a mark-up of the price of the informal payment which shows that his behavior is influenced by the choice of the informal payments’ price. Following the same structure as in the Thompson and Xavier’s paper about the solution of physician’s utility maximization problem, the current essay adds an ethical concern factor and derives that physicians’ behavior is influenced by giving them a lower power to impose more informal payments in the informal market of unofficial payments. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Lampropoulou, Panagiota LU
supervisor
organization
course
NEKN01 20132
year
type
H1 - Master's Degree (One Year)
subject
keywords
ethical concern, informal or unofficial payments, physicians’ behavior, utility maximization
language
English
id
4092797
date added to LUP
2013-10-30 13:10:31
date last changed
2013-10-30 13:10:31
@misc{4092797,
  abstract     = {{The purpose of this essay is to analyze the phenomenon of informal payments in Greece and introduce a theoretical model for the physicians’ behavior while including ethical concern in the physicians’ utility maximization problem. The inspiration model of this essay comes from the empirical paper of Thompson and Xavier (2002), which introduces informal payments in physicians’ behavior. According to that paper, a physician chooses an informal payment in order to solve his utility maximization problem. Aiming to the solution of the maximization problem, a physician needs to make a choice of the price of the informal payment so as to equalize his marginal revenue with marginal cost, hence acting as a monopolist. From his choice it is possible to derive a mark-up of the price of the informal payment which shows that his behavior is influenced by the choice of the informal payments’ price. Following the same structure as in the Thompson and Xavier’s paper about the solution of physician’s utility maximization problem, the current essay adds an ethical concern factor and derives that physicians’ behavior is influenced by giving them a lower power to impose more informal payments in the informal market of unofficial payments.}},
  author       = {{Lampropoulou, Panagiota}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{A theoretical model of physician's behavior with informal payments and ethical concern; the case of Greece}},
  year         = {{2013}},
}