Abstract
The wage agreement signed with the physicians in 2011 included significant incentives for physicians to move to peripheral regions and encouraged specialization in fields where there is a lack of specialists. This study reviews the developments in the employment and incomes of physicians in Israel since the 2011 wage agreement, with particular focus on the effectiveness of the incentives included in the agreement to encourage physicians to move to peripheral regions. The identification strategy, using the Difference-in-Differences (Diff-in-Diffs) method, is based on disparities in the degree of exposure to the agreement's incentives among physicians from different specialties. The study's findings do not indicate that the economic incentives provided in the agreement had an impact on the likelihood of specialist physicians residing in peripheral regions. However, they do highlight the importance of physicians being exposed to education or residence in peripheral areas prior to choosing to work in these regions. There was only a moderate increase in the rate of physicians who chose to specialize in fields defined in the agreement as having a shortage of specialists. However, wage disparities between specialties may have hindered the increase in the number of specialists in some of these fields.
Key words: physicians, Wage Agreement, Periphery, physicians ' Wage Agreement, physicians ' Salaries, Specialist Doctors, Incentives to Encourage physicians to Move to the Periphery