Will Studying Economics Make You Rich? A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of the Returns to College Major

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bleemer, Zachary; Mehta, Aashish
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Santa Barbara
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-APPLIED ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7782
• DOI: 10.1257/app.20200447
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1-22
• 关键词: future earnings; merit aid; education; QUALITY; CHOICE; field; completion; curriculum; university; inference

摘要

We investigate the wage return to studying economics by leveraging a policy that prevented students with low introductory grades from declaring a major. Students who barely met the grade point average threshold to major in economics earned $22,000 (46 percent) higher annual early-career wages than they would have with their second-choice majors. Access to the economics major shifts students' preferences toward business/finance careers, and about half of the wage return is explained by economics majors working in higher-paying industries. The causal return to majoring in economics is very similar to observational earnings differences in nationally representative data.