Abstract
Health systems around the world face an increasing shortage of workers. It is thus important to understand what motivates people to enter the sector. We study how financial incentives affect the performance on the entry test into medical and healthcare schools, a crucial step for aspiring healthcare professionals. To this end, we conduct a randomized information experiment with Italian applicants. We first elicit applicants' expectations about the starting wage of the healthcare job they want to study for. We then inform the treatment group about the true starting wages, while we provide no information to the control group. We finally collect the test scores obtained by applicants. Correcting wage expectations enhances the test scores when expectations are lower than the true wage level, while no significant effects occur when expectations are higher. The treatment does not induce negative selection in terms of ability and altruism. Our findings provide novel experimental evidence that wages matter for prospective students in the health sector and suggest an impact of prospective financial rewards also at a very early stage of careers.