Working Papers

This study investigates the role of perceived academic abilities in the decisions to pursue high-reward, tech-oriented university fields. Using a comprehensive dataset that includes university entrance test scores, university applications, and employment data, I examine how left-digit bias influences test score perceptions and, consequently, shapes university field choices and subsequent career paths. The findings indicate that scoring just above a round number significantly increases applications to high-earning fields, despite stable and low admission probabilities for scores near this threshold. In response, individuals often retake tests and improve other admission-related outcomes before applying. This behavior demonstrates that round scores are perceived as stronger signals of ability, motivating students to invest more effort to gain admission into more rewarding and challenging fields. In the long term, these efforts lead to higher earnings, suggesting that the increased applications to rewarding fields are beneficial for these students. Taken together, the findings demonstrate that changes in perceptions of test score signals can significantly influence educational and career trajectories.

This paper examines the short-run and longer-term effects of gifted children's programs (GCP). Using administrative data from Israel, we follow students who participated in a GCP, studying in separate gifted classes in high schools, and compare them to equally gifted students from localities where a GCP was not offered. Our results show that while GCP participation has tiny effects on high school academic achievement, it substantially influences university outcomes. This influence is manifested in the choice of field of study, a higher incidence of double majors, and an increased likelihood of pursuing advanced degrees. Interestingly, GCP participation does not affect earnings or employment in knowledge-based sectors, implying that gifted children do well in the labor market, regardless of participation in a GCP. Finally, participation in the GCP does not affect the likelihood of marriage or having children. Still, it positively affects the spouse's ``quality'', driven by marriages between GCP participants and their classmates. We discuss potential mechanisms by relating our findings to the literature in psychology about gifted children.

Published and Forthcoming Papers

We examine how physician decisions are impacted by difficult cases - encounters with newly diagnosed cancer patients. Using detailed administrative data, we compare primary care physicians' decisions in visits that occurred before and after difficult cases and matched comparison cases by the same physicians on other dates. Immediately following a difficult case, physicians increase referrals for common tests, including diagnostic tests unrelated to cancer. The effect lasts only for about an hour, and is not driven by patient selection or schedule disruption. The results highlight difficult encounters as a source for variability in physician practice. 

We examine whether primary care physicians alter their clinical decision-making following realizations of low probability risks among their patients --  events of colon cancer diagnoses. Relying on comprehensive administrative visit level data from a large Israeli HMO, we find that physicians increase their patients' use of colonoscopy tests substantially during the first three months following such events and that in the subsequent twelve months the effect dissipates. We find no indication that older -- typically more experienced -- physicians are less responsive to Events, nor do we find that physicians' response varies by their gender. Considering that in our setting, it is unlikely that colon cancer diagnoses convey information in the traditional sense, these results indicate the existence of attention effects.  Unexpected events induce a stronger physician response and the increase in the use of colonoscopy tests is more pronounced among patients that are similar to the patient involved in the event, in line with recent work on cognitive mechanisms and memory where surprises and associative memory play a key role in decision making.  We also do not find evidence that the quality of colonoscopy tests decreases with the increase in their use, suggesting that in response to events, physicians induce adherence to colonoscopy tests among their at-risk patients rather than merely lowering the cut-off risk level of prescribing colonoscopy tests. 

Work in Progress

How College Major Choices Shape Political Attitudes and Polarization? (with Matan Kolerman-Shemer)

Decision-Making in Preventive Medicine: Heterogeneity in Treatment-Effects, Risk Prediction, and Patient Adherence (with Ori Shoham, Ity Shurtz and Dan Zeltzer)