Can Pay Regulation Kill?

This is an interesting and serious article, "Pay regulation can be a killer".

....Centralised pay regulation means hospitals in high wage areas treat fewer patients and these patients have poorer health outcomes. These effects are not trivial: the results suggest that a 10% increase in the gap between the wages paid to NHS (UK National Health Service) nurses and those paid to women working in the private sector locally raises the fatality rate among people admitted with a heart attack by 5%. The size of this effect is not dissimilar to the reductions in heart attack fatalities brought about by the greater use of aspirin and other clot-busting drugs in recent years....

In sum, centralised pay-setting for nurses in the NHS leads to more temporary nurses and lower quality of nurse performance in the NHS, which results in higher fatality rates among patients who are admitted with emergency heart attacks.

Is there someting like that anywhere?

Recently, the products made in Japan have been reported to be lower quality than before. A logo, "Made in Japan", has been known well as just like a brand, but it is about to become an old legend.

One of the reasons has been thought to be that employment-regulation for munufacturer leads to vacancy of skilled labors, high turnover rates and fewer qualified work of labors. After all, it results in lower quality of the products "made in Japan".

Anyway, this is an important problem that we cannot ignore.

Thank you for the pointer of Prof. Otake.

Reference: Can pay regulation kill? Evidence from English hospital trusts
Carol Propper John Van Reenen
30 January 2008