Do Dutch dentists extract monopoly rents?

We exploit lottery-determined admission to dental school to estimate the payoffs to the study of dentistry in the Netherlands. Using data from up to 22 years after the lottery, we find that in most years after graduation dentists earn around 50,000 Euros more than they would earn in their next-best profession. The payoff is larger for men than for women but does not vary with high school GPA. The large payoffs cannot be attributed to longer working hours, larger investments while studying (opportunity costs and direct costs), or unpleasant aspects of working as a dentist. A plausible explanation is that dentists earn a monopoly rent. Results from regressions of dentists' earnings on dentists density are consistent with this, as are the facts that the supply of dentists in the Netherlands is low and that the payoff does not vary with high school GPA.

The effects of medical school on health outcomes: evidence from admission lotteries.

This paper estimates the effects of attending medical school on health outcomes by exploiting that admission to medical school in the Netherlands is determined by a lottery. Among the applicants for medical school, people who attended medical school have on average 1.5 more years of completed education than people who did not. They are also more likely to have been exposed to a health-related education curriculum. The results show only modest impacts on health outcomes. Attending medical school reduces alcohol consumption and being underweight somewhat, and has a small positive impact on self-reported health status. It has, however, a small negative effect on the frequency of physical exercise and no significant impact on smoking, and being overweight or obese. Attending medical school does have a large positive impact on the probability of being registered for donations of organs.