Choosing the Field of Study in Postsecondary Education: Do Expected Earnings Matter?

Abstract This paper examines the determinants of the choice of the college major when the length of studies and future earnings are uncertain. We estimate a three-stage schooling decision model, focusing on the effect of expected earnings on major choice. We control for dynamic selection through the use of mixture distributions. Exploiting variations across the French business cycle in the relative returns to the majors, our results yield a very low, though significant, elasticity of major choice to expected earnings. This suggests that at least for the French university context, nonpecuniary factors are a key determinant of schooling choices.

• Publication year

  2012

• Venue

  Review of Economics and Statistics

• Publication date

  2012-01-30

• Fields of study

  Economics, Education

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1162/REST_a_00212
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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