On The Possibility that American College Students Are Not Human Capitalists

Gregory Lilly () and Samuel Allen ()
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Samuel Allen: Department of Economics, Virginia Military Institute

No 2009-01, Working Papers from Elon University, Department of Economics

Abstract: We assess the likelihood that earnings premiums influence college students' behavior as human capital theory suggests. We highlight several key observable patterns of earnings by age, sex, and for numerous college majors in recent decades, and propose a model of heterogeneous human capital to explain the data. Next, we formulate and test the hypothesis that greater expected average annual earnings by college major will induce greater proportions of college students to select higher-paying majors. The evidence implies that - at least for the observed range of earnings premiums - monetary incentives are insufficient to fully explain behavior.

JEL-codes: I21 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 59 pages
Date: 2009-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-hpe, nep-hrm and nep-lab
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