Appendix Table 4.

The Impact of Average Noneconomic Damage Awards in a County on the Probability of Facing a Malpractice Suit.

	Any Claim		Claim with Defense Costs
Noneconomic Award (Hundreds of Thousands)	0.005 (0.003)*	0.005 (0.003)*	0.007 (0.003)**	0.006 (0.003)**
Elasticity	0.055	0.068	0.093	0.111
Physician fixed effects:	No	Yes	No	Yes

Notes: The table reports the estimated effect of average noneconomic jury award dollars in tort cases on the probability of being sued. Sample includes claims reported against insured physicians in California who purchase their policies from a single large insurance company from 1991-2000. The model is estimated as a linear probability model with an indicator variable indicating a lawsuit reported against a physician in a year as the dependent variable. The coefficient is reported for the moving average of noneconomic damage awards in plaintiff wins in tort cases lagged 1, 2 and 3 years. The unit of analysis is a physician-year. County population is used as a weight in all regressions. Other explanatory variables include indicators for physician specialty, physician age, year fixed-effects, a quadratic for per capita income, the percent of the population that is male, white, African-American, and that falls into 5-year age ranges. Elasticities are evaluated at the mean values of the dependent and independent variables. Robust standard errors allowing clustering at the physician level are reported in parentheses. A *, **, or *** represents statistical significance at the 10, 5, or 1% level, respectively.