Abstract
Restrictions on physicians' working hours are increasingly prevalent across many countries. Yet, the effects of these policies on patients' health remain poorly understood. Using administrative and archival data from Denmark, we study a 1982 reform that capped subordinate physicians' workweeks at 40 hours, shortened nighttime duty schedules, and strongly restricted overtime in public hospitals. We show that the reform induced a large, exogenous increase in labor demand for physicians. We then investigate the effect of this change on the supply and quality of healthcare. For identification, we exploit variation across time and hospital wards differentially exposed to the reform, in a continuous difference-in-differences strategy. As the exposure measure, we use the pre-policy share of unplanned patient admissions as a predictor of the intensity with which employers had to substitute hours for workers. Our preliminary findings suggest that more affected wards admitted relatively more patients without increasing short- and medium-term mortality rates, readmission rates, or length-of-stay.