Risk Aversion and College Subject

Paolo Buonanno and Dario Pozzoli

No 707, Working Papers (-2012) from University of Bergamo, Department of Economics

Abstract: We investigate whether individual attitudes toward risk may explain why, though there exist huge di erences in the employment returns of graduates by fields of study, the most demanded subjects by the economy are less frequently chosen. The econometric methodology is based on a three step procedure which controls for selectivity bias in the rst stage (Heckman, 1979; Lee, 1983; Trost and Lee, 1984). Using a large data set from a survey on the 2001 Italian high school graduates, the main results indicate that students take into account the a priori probability of unsuccess when choosing the college subject. Moreover, students coming from a lower socio-economic background display more risk aversion.

Keywords: Risk aversion; College subject; Self-selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C34 I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2007-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:brg:wpaper:0707

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