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Knowledge Growth and Specialization: Evidence from Oncologists 

89 Pages Posted: 19 Sep 2024

See all articles by Maya Lozinski

Maya Lozinski

University of Chicago

Date Written: September 18, 2024

Abstract

Do expert workers respond to growth in general knowledge by
specializing and narrowing their scope? I study this empirically in
the context of medical oncology. I document explosive growth in
knowledge using changes in historical cancer treatment guidelines.
Surprisingly, most oncologists are general oncologists and do not
become more specialized over time or in response to knowledge growth.
However, exposure to knowledge growth causes a minority of already
specialized oncologists to become even more specialized. Specialists
also increasingly provide higher quality care: over time, they
prescribe more up-to-date cancer drugs and have more experience with
the drugs they prescribe than generalists. These results suggest that
most oncologists, who are generalists and primarily users of
knowledge, may respond to knowledge growth not by specializing but by
falling behind the frontier. In addition, specialization increases
only in large markets, leading to growing geographic inequality in
specialization, and implies growing economies of scale in specialized
healthcare and the associated high-skill labor markets.

Keywords: specialization, knowledge growth, healthcare, economies of
scale

JEL Classification: I11, J24, L23, O33

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Lozinski, Maya, Knowledge Growth and Specialization: Evidence from
Oncologists  (September 18, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://
ssrn.com/abstract=4960603 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4960603
 

Maya Lozinski (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

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