Bargaining Over Labor: Do Patients Have Any Power?

32 Pages Posted: 11 Dec 2011

See all articles by Joshua S. Gans

Joshua S. Gans

University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management; NBER

Andrew Leigh

Australian House of Representatives Parliament House

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Abstract

We provide a new method of identifying the level of relative bargaining power in bilateral negotiations using exogenous variation in the degree of conflict between parties. Using daily births data, we study negotiations over birth timing. In doing so, we exploit the fact that fewer children are born on the "inauspicious" dates of February 29 and April 1; most likely, we argue, reflecting parental preferences. When these inauspicious dates abut a weekend, this creates a potential conflict between avoiding the inauspicious date (the parents' likely preference), and avoiding the weekend (the doctor's likely preference). Using daily births data, we estimate how often this conflict is resolved in favor of the physician. We show how this provides an estimate of how bargaining power is distributed between patients and physicians.

Keywords: timing of births, weekend effect, bargaining power

JEL Classification: I11, J13

Suggested Citation

Gans, Joshua S. and Leigh, Andrew, Bargaining Over Labor: Do Patients Have Any Power?. IZA Discussion Paper No. 6165, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1970760 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1970760

Joshua S. Gans (Contact Author)

University of Toronto - Rotman School of Management ( email )

Canada

HOME PAGE: http://www.joshuagans.com

NBER ( email )

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

Andrew Leigh

Australian House of Representatives Parliament House

Canberra, 2600
Australia

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