THE LABOR MARKET FOR REGISTERED NURSES: HOSPITALS, TRAINING AND TURNOVER.
Contributors: Florida State University.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 197
Subjects: Economics, Labor.; Economics, Theory.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: This dissertation provides an analysis of the labor market for registered nurses. The time path in earnings for RNs is first examined. Real and relative wages of RNs increased substantially during the 1980s and early 1990s. Measured worker characteristics explain little of the earnings growth, which tended to follow the growth of the health care sector as a whole. The analysis next focuses on the returns to schooling and experience. RNs with a bachelor's degree are found to earn about 9 percent higher wages than those with an associate or diploma degree. These returns or wage differentials are lower in hospitals, which attract high ability RNs regardless of degree. The potential bias in estimated cross-sectional wage-experience profiles, owing to year and cohort effects, is next examined. Longitudinal wage profiles are substantially steeper than cross-sectional profiles, and to the extent that cohort effects dominate year effects, the "true" returns to experience are much larger than suggested by cross-sectional results. Using longitudinal data we then show that about half of the large cross-sectional wage differential between hospital and non-hospital RNs is due to hospitals attracting RNs with higher (unmeasured) ability. It is also found that hospital RNs tend to be more attached to the labor market than non-hospital RNs, and that the higher a nurse's actual wage relative to what she is predicted to earn (both inside and outside nursing), the less likely she is to leave the nursing market. Finally, the focus turns directly to the hospital, where we develop a model of hospital competition that examines the implications of the medical arms race. The model shows that if hospitals compete through relative quality, and quality is a function of the number of specialty services provided, there is a tendency toward the overprovision of these specialty services. This results in a social inefficiency that would not result under pure price competition.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-11, Section: A, page: 3601.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY, 1994.

School code: 0071.