Path Dependency in Physician Decisions
研究发现急诊医生对当前患者的治疗决策与前一患者正相关，且这种关联在病情不确定性高、患者相似、医生经验少或疲劳时更强，支持记忆与注意力模型。
Abstract We examine path dependency in physician decisions in an emergency department setting, and find that physicians’ treatment decisions for the current and previous patients are positively correlated. We show that the positive autocorrelation is higher when the current patient is of greater medical uncertainty or more similar to the previous patient in terms of observed characteristics and when the physician is less experienced or more fatigued. We then show that these patterns are highly consistent with the memory and attention model, whereby the physician’s current decision is anchored to her previous decision. The results from both reduced-form analyses and structural estimations provide further support for the importance of memory and attention in physician decision-making.