{"title":"Educational choice, initial wage and wage growth","authors":"Hans van Ophem, Jacopo Mazza","doi":"10.1007/s00181-024-02580-5","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>We study the effects of expected initial wages, expected wage growth, and observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the choice of college major in a sample of American college graduates. We propose a three-stage empirical model that relates future earnings to individual choices. In the first stage, starting from revealed choices, observed wages, and life-cycle wage profiles, we estimate the expectation on initial wages and wage growth from the individual point of view, where the panel structure of the data allows us to produce estimates corrected for self-selection bias. We find substantial differences in expected real wages and expected real wage growth between majors and that both characteristics of life cycle earnings influence major choice. Our parametric models show a strong correlation between salary trends and major choice, whereas semiparametric models yield less reliable results. We interpret our results as being consistent with agents being rational and as a validation for our estimation strategy based on counterfactual imputation.\n</p>","PeriodicalId":11642,"journal":{"name":"Empirical Economics","volume":"961 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2024-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Empirical Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00181-024-02580-5","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We study the effects of expected initial wages, expected wage growth, and observed and unobserved heterogeneity in the choice of college major in a sample of American college graduates. We propose a three-stage empirical model that relates future earnings to individual choices. In the first stage, starting from revealed choices, observed wages, and life-cycle wage profiles, we estimate the expectation on initial wages and wage growth from the individual point of view, where the panel structure of the data allows us to produce estimates corrected for self-selection bias. We find substantial differences in expected real wages and expected real wage growth between majors and that both characteristics of life cycle earnings influence major choice. Our parametric models show a strong correlation between salary trends and major choice, whereas semiparametric models yield less reliable results. We interpret our results as being consistent with agents being rational and as a validation for our estimation strategy based on counterfactual imputation.
期刊介绍：
Empirical Economics publishes high quality papers using econometric or statistical methods to fill the gap between economic theory and observed data. Papers explore such topics as estimation of established relationships between economic variables, testing of hypotheses derived from economic theory, treatment effect estimation, policy evaluation, simulation, forecasting, as well as econometric methods and measurement. Empirical Economics emphasizes the replicability of empirical results. Replication studies of important results in the literature - both positive and negative results - may be published as short papers in Empirical Economics. Authors of all accepted papers and replications are required to submit all data and codes prior to publication (for more details, see: Instructions for Authors).The journal follows a single blind review procedure. In order to ensure the high quality of the journal and an efficient editorial process, a substantial number of submissions that have very poor chances of receiving positive reviews are routinely rejected without sending the papers for review.Officially cited as: Empir Econ
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