Correcting Beliefs About Job Opportunities and Wages: A Field Experiment on Education Choices

Bart K. de Koning (), Didier Fouarge () and Robert Dur
Additional contact information
Bart K. de Koning: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Didier Fouarge: ROA, Maastricht University

No 17951, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: We run a field experiment in which we provide information to students about job opportunities and hourly wages of occupations they are interested in. The experiment takes place within a widely-used career orientation program in the Netherlands, and involves 28,186 pre-vocational secondary education students in 243 schools over two years. The information improves the accuracy of students' beliefs and leads them to change their preferred occupation to one with better labor market prospects. Administrative data that covers up to four years after the experiment shows that students choose (and remain in) post-secondary education programs with better job opportunities and higher hourly wages as a result of the information treatment.

Keywords: field experiment; labor market information; education choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D83 I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-lma and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17951.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17951

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark Fallak ().