Learning-by-Doing and Productivity Growth Among High-Skilled Workers: Evidence from the Treatment of Heart Attacks

Abstract

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Performance measures and worker productivity

“…Figure 2 provides examples of workers' productivity measures which were used in studies published in leading economics journals, and whose findings can be used to inform policymakers and practitioners [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12]. The figure shows that performance is not only measurable for low-skilled jobs with routine tasks, but that it can also be measured for rather knowledge-intensive, non-routine professions, such as lawyers, physicians, or scientists.…”

“…This can be shown, for instance, by analyzing how job performance increases with job tenure. The common finding is that performance increases strongly in the early employment period, whereas the marginal return to tenure decreases over time [10].…”

The distribution of doctor quality: evidence from cardiologists in England

“…An early exception is who show significant variation in the effectiveness of obstetricians who specialise in different delivery methods. More recent work has begun to further examine variation in the performance of individual doctors in different settings (Currie and Zhang, 2021;Dahlstrand, 2022;Ginja et al, 2022) and the returns to experience for doctors (Chen, 2021;Lundborg et al, 2021). I contribute to this nascent literature by estimating quality measures for individual doctors across a large, national health system, and use these measures to both document inequalities in access to high quality care, and to show how health outcomes could be improved by reorganising existing staff resources.…”

How Worker Productivity and Wages Grow with Tenure and Experience: The Firm Perspective

“…See, for example,Dinerstein, Megalokonomou and Yannelis (2020) for teachers,Choudhury, Foroughi and Larson (2021) for patent workers,Bloom et al (2015) andEmanuel and Harrington (2021) for call-center workers,Oettinger (2001) for stadium vendors,Lundborg et al (2021) for physicians, and Kunn, Seel and Zegners (2020) for professional chess players.2 In other contexts, such as productivity changes due to working from home, the impact in question may be more salient to employees, and hence an employee survey can be useful. SeeBarrero, Bloom and Davis (2021) for such an example.…”