Wages and work conditions as determinants for physicians’ work decisions

It is not uncommon that publicly employed physicians also have income from work outside the hospital, often termed moonlighting. There is little empirical evidence of such activity. In this paper we investigate which factors that may influence physicians’ choice of work between the public hospital sector and elsewhere. An exceptionally high wage increase in 1996 for one group of hospital physicians (assistant physicians) serves as a natural experiment, and we analyse whether wages in general and this reform in particular have affected physicians’ external earnings. For assistant physicians we find that higher wages at public hospitals affect negatively both the decisions to earn income externally, and level of income once active. For consultant physicians, on the other hand, there was no such response to the wage increase. Several hospital specific factors representing job specific work characteristics also matter for physicians’ decisions to moonlight.Physicians; wages; job characteristics; moonlighting; panel data.

Works Councils and Environmental Investment: Theory and Evidence from German Panel Data

Firms may underinvest in local environmental protection even from the private viewpoint of its owners and employees, but works councils may help mitigate this problem. We show that increases in environmental investments when councils are present could be employee-led, firm-led, or jointly-led. We test these alternatives with German panel data using a random effects probit model, and find a strong and robust relationship between investments in improving local environmental quality and council activities. This effect is largest and most significant when the council is active in environmental matters, and when management views employee participation as productive. With the exception of product innovation, we generally do not find analogous effects on investments that reduce environmental impacts more remote from the workplace, or for other types of investment. We conclude that the higher environmental investments in establishments with councils are largely employee-led or jointly-led; but the significant effect of management attitudes toward participation suggests that genuine management-employee cooperation and the tradeoffs it implies is taking place.

Will Increased Wages Reduce Shortage of Nurses? A Panel Data Analysis of Nurses' Labor Supply

Shortage of nurses is a problem in several countries. It is an unsettled question whether increasing wages constitute a viable policy for extracting more labor supply from nurses. In this paper we use a unique matched panel data set of Norwegian nurses covering the period 1993-1997 to estimate wage elasticities. This data includes detailed information on 18,066 individuals over 5 years totaling 56,832 observations. The estimated elasticity when controlling for individual and time invariant fixed effects is significantly positive but not very high in magnitude. Individual and institutional features are significant and important for working hours. We have also access to information about contractual arrangements. It turns out that shift work is important for hours of work, and that omitting information about this common phenomenon will underestimate the wage effect.Nurses, labor supply, panel data, selection

Prioritization and patients' rights: Analysing the effect of a reform in the Norwegian Hospital Sector

The right to equal treatment, irrespective of age, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status and place of resident, is an important principle for several health care systems. A reform of the Norwegian hospital sector may be used as a relevant experiment for investigating whether centralization of ownership and management structures will lead to more equal prioritization practices over geographical regions. One concern was variation in waiting times across thecountry. The reform was followed up in subsequent years by some other policy initiatives that also aimed at reducing waiting lists. Prioritization practice is measured by a method that takes departure in recommended maximum waiting times from medical guidelines. We merge the information from the guidelines with individual patient data on actual waiting times. This way we can monitor whether each patient in the available register of actual hospital visits has waited shorter or longer than what is considered medically acceptable by the guideline. The results indicate no equalisation between the five new health regions, but we find evidence of more equal prioritization within four of the health regions. Our method of measuring prioritizations allows us to analyse how prioritization practice evolved over time after the reform, thus covering some further initiatives with the same objective. The results indicate that an observed reduction in waiting times after the reform have favoured patients of lower prioritization status, something we interpret as a general worsening of prioritization practices over time.Prioritization; waiting time; hospital reform

Unemployment, labour force composition and sickness absence. A panel data study

Sickness absence tends to be negatively correlated with unemployment. This may suggest disciplining effects of unemployment but may also reflect changes in the composition of the labour force. A panel of Norwegian register data for the years 1990-1995 is used to analyse sickness absences lasting more than two weeks. We estimate fixed effects models of the probability of absence and the number of days on sick leave conditional on absence. The county unemployment rate is found to affect the probability of absence negatively. When restricting the sample to workers who are present in the whole sample period, the negative relationship between absence and unemployment remains. The evidence on duration goes in the same direction. This indicates that the revealed procyclical variation in sickness absence is not driven by changes in the composition of the labour force.Sickness absence; unemployment; panel data.

Sickness Absence and Business Cycles

Absenteeism is affected by the sickness benefit system. Countries with generous compensation during sick leaves also experience high numbers of sick leave. Sick leaves may vary over the business cycle due to unemployment disciplining effects or changes in labour force composition. The latter hypothesis maintains that sickness may be pro-cyclical due to employment of `marginal' workers with poorer health when demand increases. Using individual records of labour force participants in Norway, we investigate the explanatory factors behind differing spells of work absence at different stages of the business cycle. We find no indication that new entrants explain increases in absence, on the other hand workers who stay in the labour force increase absences when the economy improves. Thus there is some evidence that unemployment has a disciplining effect.

The Impact of Different Prioritisation Policies on Waiting Times: A Comparative Analysis of Norway and Scotland

We compare the distributional consequences of two different waiting times initiatives. The primary focus of Scotland’s recent waiting time reforms has been on reducing maximum waiting times through the imposition of high profile national targets. In Norway, the focus has been on appropriate prioritisation of referrals to hospital based on disease severity, the expected benefit of the treatment and cost-effectiveness. We use large, national administrative datasets from before and after each of these reforms and assign priority groups based on the maximum waiting times stipulated in Norwegian medical guidelines. To equalise case-mix over time, we use Exact Matching to weight the pre-reform patients to the patient composition in the post-reform period. We regress patient-level waiting times on patient characteristics and on a post-reform indicator interacted with the patient’s priority group. The analysis shows that the least-prioritised patients benefited most from both reforms. This was at the cost of longer waiting times for patients that should have been given higher priority in Norway, while Scotland’s high priority patients remained unaffected. This comparative analysis indicates that blanket waiting times initiatives may be more effective in reducing waiting times while preserving prioritisation between patients with different health needs.Waiting times; prioritisation; Norway; Scotland

Høye avgifter på landtransport i Norge: betydning for transport og annen næringsvirksomhet

Rapporten dokumenterer resultatene fra et oppdragsprosjekt utført for Nærings- og handelsdepartementet med det formål å analysere den betydning avgifter har på norsk landtransport i et internasjonalt perspektiv og med fokus på tidsforløpet. Hovedvekten er lagt på vegtransport, men jernbanetransport behandles også. Det ligger ikke innenfor prosjektets rammer å foreta noen total analyse av sammenhenger mellom priser, kostnader og konkurranseforhold for norske transportører. I noen grad analyserer vi priser og totalkostnader i kapittel 1, men hovedvekten har vært på avgiftenes betydning for konkurranseforholdene. Det teoretiske grunnlaget for analysene bygger på logistikk med vekt på kostnader, inter-organisatoriske relasjoner og konkurransefordeler og markedsøkonomi med vekt på markedsatferd og atferdens forutsetninger. Statsvitenskapelige elementer med vekt på forståelse for hvordan forvaltningen fungerer og samspiller nasjonalt og i tilknytning til Den europeiske union (EU), inngår også i analysen. Prosjektet er gjennomført dels som litteraturanalyser, dels som caseanalyser av et antall utførte lastebilturer mellom Norge og utlandet sammenholdt med lignende turer for uten-landske produsenter. I prosjektet er det lagt vekt på synspunkter på utviklingen fremover. Både caseanalysene og viktigheten av å se avgiftene i et tidsforløp representerer originale bidrag til forståelsen av hvilke muligheter som foreligger for fremtidige avgiftsordninger

Formålet med kroppsøvingsfaget : Fremkomsten av diskurser innen norsk kroppsøving: En kvantitativ tverrsnittstudie

Master grunnskolelærerutdanning for trinn 5-10, 5-årig masterprogram IDR507 - Universitetet i Agder 2018Background and purpose: The purpose of physical education is a highly discussed theme today, mostly because of the unclear core of the subject. This study aims to investigate the emergence of the health-discourse, the sports-discourse and the «bildung» -discourse, as well as to examine which of these discourses that are the most prominent within Norwegian physical education. The study also aims to investigate the emergence of gender differences in the discourses in the subject, if there is a difference in experienced discourses based on schooling as well as investigating if students' wellbeing makes a difference in the understanding of discourses in physical education. Method: The design of this study was a cross-sectional method. The collection of data for the survey was conducted in 2016 as a part of a larger project, REPAC. The responders in the study were physical education students (N =2680) in the 8th grade at secondary school and 3rd grade at high school. The participants were from schools in Agder, Oslo/Akershus and Østfold. An instrument aimed to measure the emergence of the three discourses health, sport and «bildung»-discourse, was developed for this study. Results: The study showed that the health-discourse was the most prominent discourse within Norwegian physical education. The results showed a significant difference between gender and experienced health- and «bildung»-discourse in the subject, but no gender-difference between experienced sports-discourse of the subject, where the girls reported higher levels than the boys. There was no significant difference between experienced discourses based on schooling. The results also showed a significant difference between experienced purpose of the subject and student's well-being in physical education. In other words, the students that like the subject reported higher levels on all of the discourses, and the students that do not like the subject reported lower levels on all of the discourses. Key words: Physical education, the purpose of physical education, aim of the subject, health-discourse, sports-discourse, «bildung»-discours