EuHEA Seminar - Alessandro Fedele (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)
Title: "Wage Expectations and Effort of Prospective Healthcare Professionals: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment"
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Date: 01 December 2021 from 14:30 to 15:30
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Event location: Online (Zoom)
Abstract
The steady increase of population aging and the current pandemic outbreak are exacerbating the shortage of health sector employees, both medical doctors and healthcare professionals. In this paper, we conduct a randomized experiment with 279 applicants to medical and healthcare schools in Italy, where admission is subject to passing a competitive test. We first elicit applicants' beliefs about wages in the health sector and then inform the treatment group about the actual levels of entry wages. We find that correcting wage beliefs enhances the applicants' test score, only if they expect a lower wage level than the actual one. Our result suggests that wage matters for prospective health sector employees.
Speaker: Alessandro Fedele (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano)
Discussant: Daniel Wiesen (University of Cologne)
Chair: Tor Iversen (University of Oslo)