University Admission and the Similarity of Fields of Study: Effects on Earnings and Skill Usage

Moira Daly, Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen and Daniel le Maire

Labour Economics, 2022, vol. 75, issue C

Abstract: Using discontinuities from the Danish college enrollment system, we find that students who are marginally accepted into their preferred program in a broad field that is different from their next-best choice (e.g., business rather than science) experience significant and long-lasting rewards as a result. In contrast, students whose preferred and next-best programs lie within the same broad field do not. Exploiting data from online job postings, we find that the estimated effects on skill usage similarly vary according to the degree of similarity between preferred and next-best choices.

Keywords: Field of study; earnings; skills; online job postings; regression discontinuity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I23 I26 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537122000112
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:labeco:v:75:y:2022:i:c:s0927537122000112

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2022.102118

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().