In this paper, I assess the extent to which the gender gap in physician earnings may be driven by physicians' preference for working with specialists of the same gender. By analyzing administrative data on 100 million Medicare patient referrals, I provide robust evidence that doctors refer more to specialists of their same gender, a tendency known as homophily. I propose a new measure of homophily that is invariant to differences between the genders in the propensity to refer or receive referrals. I show that biased referrals are predominantly driven by physicians' decisions rather than by endogenous sorting of physicians or patients or by gender differences in the labor supply. As 75% of doctors are men, estimates suggest biased referrals generate a 5% lower demand for female relative to male specialists, pointing to a positive externality for increased female participation in medicine.

中文翻译：

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转诊网络中的性别同质性：医疗保险医生收入差距的后果

在这篇论文中，我评估了医生收入的性别差距在多大程度上可能是由医生偏爱与同性别的专家一起工作造成的。通过分析 1 亿医疗保险患者转诊的行政数据，我提供了强有力的证据，表明医生更多地向同性别的专家推荐，这种趋势被称为同性。我提出了一种新的同质性衡量标准，它对转介或接受转介倾向的性别差异是不变的。我表明有偏见的转诊主要是由医生的决定驱动的，而不是由医生或患者的内生分类或劳动力供应中的性别差异驱动的。由于 75% 的医生是男性，估计表明有偏见的转诊对女性的需求比男性专家低 5%，