in Economics

Dental service providers in the British National Health Service (NHS) operate under a number of remuneration arrangements that give rise to different incentives. We present a theoretical model of the effect of different remuneration structures on treat-ment intensity and test this model on data on treatments carried out in Scotland. After controlling for differences in patient need and dentist specific preferences, we find that self-employed dentists treat patients who are exempt from payment more intensively than their employed counterparts. The results imply that changes in re-muneration can have a large effect on the distribution of treatments. More generall