Modeling college major choices using elicited measures of expectations and counterfactuals.

Autor/inn/en	Arcidiacono, Peter; Hotz, V. Joseph; Kang, Songman
Titel	Modeling college major choices using elicited measures of expectations and counterfactuals.
Quelle	Bonn: IZA (2010), 29 S. PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Reihe	Discussion paper series / Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit. 4738
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	online; Monographie; Graue Literatur
Schlagwörter	Bildungsverhalten; Schätzung; Erwartung; Erwartungshaltung; Einkommen; Berufswahl; Studienfach; Arbeitspapier; Student; USA
Abstract	"The choice of a college major plays a critical role in determining the future earnings of college graduates. Students make their college major decisions in part due to the future earnings streams associated with the different majors. We survey students about what their expected earnings would be both in the major they have chosen and in counterfactual majors. We also elicit students' subjective assessments of their abilities in chosen and counterfactual majors. We estimate a model of college major choice that incorporates these subjective expectations and assessments. We show that both expected earnings and students' abilities in the different majors are important determinants of student's choice of a college major. We also show that students' forecast errors with respect to expected earnings in different majors is potentially important, with our estimates suggesting that 7.5% of students would switch majors if they made no forecast errors"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Erfasst von	ZBW - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft, Kiel
Update	2010/3