By Thomas Barnay, Professor of Economics at Paris-Est Créteil University, member of Erudite.

The distribution of self-employed doctors across France has become a major public policy issue. As geographical inequalities in access to care become more pronounced, the question of how to regulate the installation of doctors has come to the forefront of public debate: Should freedom of installation be maintained, at the risk of exacerbating these imbalances, or should constraints be introduced, at the risk of distorting liberal practice? In this article, Thomas Barnay takes up and updates the analysis developed in an article published in the Revue française des affaires sociales (n° 244/4, 2024), where he examines this dilemma from an economic angle, and shows that regulation is the best way to reduce the imbalance.economic angle, and shows that regulation, if well thought-out, can be economically justified and socially necessary, provided the instruments are coordinated.

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