ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses labor issues that range from general supply and demand principles applied to all health care occupations, to specialized topics involving shortages of doctors and registered nurses, medical education and licensure, and various practice decisions of physicians. It describes the determinants of labor demand, explains demand for a factor of production, either labor or capital, from the demand for health. The productivity and training of health care providers are important to the working of labor markets and to the demands and supplies of labor. Economists apply definitions based on considerations of how characteristics of a given market for professionals deviate from those found in an ideal, highly competitive market. In Canada's single-payer health system, individual provinces have monopsonistic market power in paying hospitals and professionals. In addition to studying the physician's productivity, Reinhardt examined the substitution possibilities between physician and other labor inputs.