Wage Expectations and Access to Healthcare Occupations: Evidence from an Information Experiment

Juliana Bernhofer (), Alessandro Fedele and Mirco Tonin
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Juliana Bernhofer: Department of Economics, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy

No BEMPS95, BEMPS - Bozen Economics & Management Paper Series from Faculty of Economics and Management at the Free University of Bozen

Abstract: We analyze how financial incentives affect performance on the admission tests for medical and healthcare schools, a crucial step for aspiring healthcare professionals. To this end, we conducted a randomized information experiment with Italian applicants. We first elicited applicants' expectations about the starting wage of the healthcare job for which they intend to study. We then informed the treatment group about the true starting wages, while providing no information to the control group. Finally, we collected the test scores. Applicants expecting a lower wage tend to perform worse, but correcting wage expectations eliminates this difference; indeed, the treatment enhances the test scores when expectations are lower than the true wage level, while negative effects occur when expectations are higher. Moreover, the treatment does not induce adverse selection of low-altruism applicants.

Keywords: Information Experiment; Wage Expectations; Financial Incentives; Test Scores; Health Occupations. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 I1 I23 J3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: [24 pages]
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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